Speed Up Your Forums vBulletin 4!

I am the originial author of this article specially made for vBulletin.org and .com - Yes i am ChopSuey of vBDiscussions.com (Down until i get the server back.) Enjoy this article.

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Hopefully this article will help your slow vBulletin 4 forum speed up a bit.

1. First of all, here are some admincp settings you can set, credit to eva2000

2. Store CSS As files - more info here

3. Enabling Datastore

To improve performance, vBulletin caches certain information which isn't updated often in the datastore, so that it doesn't have to be rebuilt every time it's needed.

Examples for this are

* forumcache - A serialized array with all the forums along with their options and permissions
* options - A serialized array with all the information set in the vBulletin Options
* profilefield - A serialized array of all the profile fields and their options.

The datastore data is stored in the datastore database table by default, but certain settings in the config.php file allow this to be saved in other places, to improve performance:

PHP:

 // ****** DATASTORE CACHE CONFIGURATION *****
 // Here you can configure different methods for caching datastore items.    
 // vB_Datastore_Filecache  - for using a cache file
 // $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Filecache';    
 // vB_Datastore_Memcached - for using a Memcache server    
 // It is also necessary to specify the hostname or IP address and the port the server is listening on
 // $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Memcached';
 // $config['Misc']['memcacheserver'] = '127.0.0.1';
 // $config['Misc']['memcacheport'] = '11211';

vB_Datastore_Filecache
This option saves the datastore data in the /includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php file. Reading from the filesystem is generally less load-intensive than querying the database.

To use this option, you'll need to make sure that the /includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php file is writable and readable by PHP. Usually this is chmod 777. Then, uncomment the following line in the config.php file.

(If your on a VPS or Dedi install XCache its faster than others. How to - Install Guide

4. Get rid of those rounded corners! Credit to Andy, original post here.
One reason vB4 is slower than vb3 is the use of shading and rounded corners. Add this to the bottom of the additional.css template and your forum will speed up considerably.

PHP:

* { -moz-box-shadow: none !important; }
* { -webkit-box-shadow: none !important; }

* { -moz-border-radius: 0px !important; }
* { -webkit-border-radius: 0px !important; }

Feedback from users, saying their forum loads faster.

5. Install vB4 Supercharged download it here. It does NOT work on 4.0.2 PL1 just yet, we have to wait until the author has updated the modification.

6. vBulletin 4 optimize htaccess - add those contents to your htaccess.

7. Add to top of headinclude

HTML:

<META http-equiv=Page-Exit content=BlendTrans(Duration=0)>
<META http-equiv=Page-Enter content=BlendTrans(Duration=0)>

8. Download YSLow - add the contents to your htaccess.

9. You can Improve Page Loading Time

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Thats it! If your forums have sped up a bit please let me know, if they have not and your using a VPS or Dedicated request server optimization over at vBulletin.com

------If more options come up i will add them to the thread.

10. In addition to this, check out articles from one of the worlds largest webmaser forums.

Optimize vBulletin 4

If you are using Memcached servers:

Monitor memcached servers with vBulletin

11. Enable Remote YUI:

AdminCP > Settings > Server Settings And Optimization Options > Remote YUI to YES - Prefer Google.

FractalizeR’s WebSite FractalizeR: VBulletin 4 extensive optimization guide

MORE Optimizations! I recommend installing OptiPNG I've implemented some of them on vBDiscussions.