Today i did some tests with caching plugins, wpForo and also wpForo internal caching (3 options).
The tests were done using several tools but i will post some that you can also try yourself easily.
At https://loadimpact.com/ you can test for free 25 virtual users against your forums and with registration you can do more (registration is free from what i see).
My tests were done on a high quality shared hosting plan (semi-dedi with limited # of sites) under Litespeed webserver and cloud linux (cloud linux auto limits you when you exceed usage of cpu etc etc but doesn't shut you down). PHP 7.3 and MariaDB. My plan has 1 giga of ram, 25 entry processes limit and 1 cpu, 50mb/s IO usage and 500 IOPS.
Also an optimizing plugin was used (fast velocity) but with wpForo assets excluded.
My test website is a low traffic, with low topics but with several plugins and ads from external sources. I was not able to remove the external ads, since it was a huge job (not a disable/enable a plugin).
I will post below my (interesting) findings and please comment only if you know what you are talking about. Try not to spoil this topic with OT.
I would very much be interested by gvectors comments also. Maybe they can interprete better the results in the charts.
Thank you for reading this.
The first test i did was with wpForo INTERNAL caching (3 options), Enabled and Disabled. No other caching.
In both cases my website WAS limited by CPU usage but check the results. Seems better with wpForo caching disabled?
This second test is done with wpForo internal caching ENABLED. WP Super Caching plugin (by Automattic) was used with wpForo pages INCLUDED.
Why i used WP Super Cache while other and better exist? Because WPSP uses PHP (in standard mode) and not mod_rewrite (faster) that other use. PHP serving mode seems to be working better with wpForo. With some limitations i'm sure. Also Robert has explained better what could be happening (It seems the plugin uses the WordPress core clean_post_cache() function and resets the cache when this function is called, so it understands wpForo calls. In recent versions of wpForo we optimized the cache and it calls clean_post_cache() function when some data is changed and the page cache should be reset to update information on forums and topics. )
Please note that i do NOT use any caching with wpForo. The caching was just to test things and bring out the huge benefits of caching, that IMHO gVectors have not considered carefully.
With WPSP enabled my hosting plan was NOT limited and the cpu was around 8-10% of usage. Check the results.
Hi @anonymous20,
To tell the truth I don't believe the result from this tool.
- Please provide more information about your website and forum.
- Is that a migrated forum?
- How many users, topics and posts you have. What page you use for testing?
- Do you have widgets on forum page?
- What is your PHP and MySQL versions?
- Do you use InnoDB?
- Is there any issue in Tools > Debug admin pages?
- Have you compared the result with Google PageSpeed Insights?
Howdy @Robert,
This online "tool" is not a speed measurement, but rather a load simulator. Not sure how reliable it is or not, still the load refects in my Cpanel.
Anyways, this is not a scientific test by all means. Just testing a few things.
As for the details you ask, all of them are posted already, maybe you missed them. And not errors in my installations or imgrations or whatever. As you probably know by now i get sick even to think i may have an error in my WP installation(s).
😇