Compression switched on

[richard]

I've just switched GZip compression on for the forum web pages.
This means the server will compress all pages before sending them to your browser. Yes this adds a small overhead to the server and your PC, but the actual download should be a little quicker. The main reason for doing it is sheer bandwidth.

I'm starting the ball rolling on the server migration that I've talked about. You know the issue with disk usage. I found the bandwidth usage was almost as bad. Although the absolute statistics are not quite as bad, the relative statistics are even more lopsided towards the culprit (the forums).

The LNER website uses about 4-5x more bandwidth than all my other sites put together! Of this LNER usage about 95% comes from the forums! This is probably due to a range of causes that come together. The old problem of attachments doesn't help although I do not think it is as severe (most will be viewed as thumbnails). Still, if you can, hosting images on a third party site will help. Switching compression on helps, and I've also adjusted some of the robot settings (and will continue to do so). Robot visits add to bandwidth just as us humans do.

How can you help? Don't keep hitting "reload". Also, don't click a thumbnail image unless you want to see the full size image. (usually I find the thumbnail is sufficient)

I'm looking to other options - for example it might be possible to "lighten" the size of the forum theme.

Richard

[richard]

I've just switched compression ON for the static pages. These don't take a huge amount of bandwidth compared to everything else, but it will help to keep growth in check, and give faster downloads; plus it is a test for some of my other sites with significant static bandwidth.

Let me know if you have any problems.


Richard