Question: How can I speed up my Geeklog site?

Answer: There is no one "magic" way to improve the speed of a Geeklog site (which, we like to think, isn't too bad to start with). The following is a collection of tips that may (or may not) make a difference, though:

• You can switch off the numbers behind each topic in the Topics (aka Sections) block. See $_CONF['showstorycount'] and $_CONF['showsubmissioncount'] in config.php.
  
  
• Blocks or plugins that retrieve external content (e.g. Portal blocks, blocks or plugins that retrieve news, stock quotes, weather information, etc.) may slow down the site - especially when the server they retrieve the data from is slow. Try to minimize the use of these blocks / plugins.
  
  
• Every plugin that you have installed slows down the site (minimally). So if you don't use a plugin, you should at least disable it (from the Admin's Plugin editor) or uninstall it.
  
  
• Geeklog has a feature that will let you publish stories with a date in the future (e.g. to automatically publish stories while you're away). Of course that means that Geeklog has to check if such stories exist every time index.php is called. If you don't intend to use this feature, you may want to remove the line COM_rdfUpToDateCheck() from index.php (this won't help if you've switched off the RSS feed for your site).
  
  
• You may want to optimize the tables in your database occasionally - especially if you tend to delete a lot of objects (stories, comments, users, ...). phpMyAdmin, for example, will let you do this easily. Or you can use this script, which also comes in a version that can be run from a cronjob.
  
  
• Autolinks were introduced in Geeklog 1.3.10. They are interpreted when a post is displayed and may therefore increase the CPU usage of your site. They can be disabled by setting $_CONF['disable_autolinks'] = 1; in your config.php.
  
  
• Requests from worms and referrer spammers can also slow down your site considerably. See Blocking unwanted requests to reduce server load for some tips on how to block them.
  

Also keep in mind that your site will be slower whether you're logged in as an Admin or a normal user. That's because it takes time to retrieve all the information that's displayed in the Admin's menu. So to get an impression how fast the site is for your visitors, make sure you visit your site as a normal user occasionally.

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