Just wondering, Nifty...

[Naztrain]

Why is this forum faster than ezboard? Is it just a better server or a simpler coding or what? It does go incredibly faster than the old board.

I'm just one of those people who has to know how and why things work.

By the way, everything looks good so far.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Super great question, and glad you like what you've seen so far.

Here are my thoughts & Guesses:

1) The #1 reason: This forum software is very efficient and lean. There are a ton of forum software programs out there and I've tried most of them. Many of them have a ton of super cool features, bells, whistles. My goal with forums has always been lean and mean while providing the core required tools / features. This is good for the users because it makes the forum fast, and good for the web host because it doesn't kill / bog down the server.

2) My Server is pretty robust. I can't compare it directly to ezboard, but I've been very happy with the performance. Not to say there will never be downtime / slowness / issues, but in the 9 years I've been hosting sites, and the 13 companies that have provided me with servers, my current server provider is by FAR the best.

3) Images: This can make a big difference, but not always. You'll notice that there aren't a lot of pictures on this forum. No fancy buttons, backgrounds, etc. Every time an image has to be called by the server, loaded, send to your browser, and displayed, that all ads up.

BTW, as a footnote to the first item: On the forum developer's page he says, "PunBB is a fast and lightweight... Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages."

He goes on to say, "Some features that I have so far chosen not to implement are: private messaging, file attachments, polls, linking to off-site avatars, advanced text formatting controls, subforums etc etc. The jury is still out on some of these features, but don't expect them to pop up anytime soon. It should however be noted that most, if not all of these features have been realized in the form of third-party mods."

Again, these features can all be added as modifications, but remember: the more modifications, the slower things go and the more potential there is for things breaking.

People are always going to be asking for new features and changes, and it will be up to me and CC to determine a balance.

Hope that helps!