1) minibb appears to be an extremely well-scripted bb. Since it is mysql based how does it matter that it can serve only small to moderate sized crowd ? Since it is without all the frills that can and does make some of the popular boards slower, is minibb not supposed to take even bigger loads than the bloated bbs we see ? Can some one explain me in brief terms how or what does stuffs like vbb, ib etc have that make them more "robust" ??

[ provided hardware and webhosting account specs are same ]

2) Is it possible to have differnet minibbs ( different layout, forum permissions etc ) on the same server that shares the same userbase ?
that is users can just register once and use the same login info for any of the boards they enter ? If this has been discussed already can some one point out the url please ?

3) this probably does not go here, but is it possible to have a "my fav topics" list for the reg users ( not subscription list - I mean no email needs to be sent out ) - eg. by the side of the 'sort by latest rep' 'sort by new' another link 'sort by my favs'
It seems most of the big boards do not have this handy feature and probably it wont be resource hungry

4) has any made a downloadable assorted package that will run all the mods out of the box ?

Thanks and regards to this wonderful team and community.

1) We are still having small misleadings concerning large projects. First of all, mySQL is optimized for READING the data; so, using only SELECT statements is good. Using commands like "count", "distinct" or using temporary tables in select statements dramatically decreases the speed of the execution scripts. We are optimizing this stuff from version to version; in version 2.0, we are planning to optimize most frequent requests as good as possible. The most weak places are now Statistics (will be optimized in RC3) and Search which is very critical question for us now.

But really, I think, it more depends on server configuration, database version etc. - nowadays, miniBB uses very primitive requests and even for selecting results from different tables, it uses 2 simple SELECT's instead of 1 complicated query... So I hope it could handle big loads of traffic.

2) It is possible. $Tu parameter stores the name of users table. So you need to copy/create the same version of software in different directories, set the same $Tu for everyone, and set $cookiepath to '/' so users may be logged for every forum directory once.

3) This feature is not available, but we will think about is as an addon.

4) Probably somebody but not us.

But really, I think, it more depends on server configuration, database version etc. - nowadays, miniBB uses very primitive requests and even for selecting results from different tables, it uses 2 simple SELECT's instead of 1 complicated query... So I hope it could handle big loads of traffic.

So that is what I was saying. Why do we have to label minibb as small and only capable of handling moderate loads ? I do not see why it cannot handle the same amount of large loads as vbb, phpbb etc. Correct me if I am wrong.


"My Fav Topics" as addon is a good idea - but perhaps this is the only feature which could have been added to the core - as this is really handy for users at large and those who use cybercafe and do not always use email

Correct me if I am wrong.
I could neither correct you or support you... Usually, when board is really active, most users begin to ask "for features" - for very different features that we are not going to implement, just because we want to keep the message board itself without additional stuff. That is the main goal of miniBB - for average sites and freelance programmers who want to use an extra-light script.

As about "Fav Topics" - I guess, it could be an addition to some script like "private messages".

:)

Team, thanks. I am not asking for any features :) The features I asked for are minor issues.

My point is that being extra-light does not mean it can *not* handle the extreme of loads that other bbs in use can. Minibb says in its homepage it is meant for small to medium sites. As far as my knowledge of mysql and php goes ( not much I admit ) I don't see why it can't be as competent to handle *any large* amount of load. Thus the actual advertisement ( though that may not be the proper word ) for minibb could be it is no-frills, light-weight, fast, easy as well as robust enough to handle big crowds.

Of course this will need good servers with good hardware specs and good amount of RAM but that is what most good shared hosting accounts provide today.

large amount of loads not in any terms of other extra frills or features but in terms of number of posts and number of cocurrent as well as total visitors :)

Minigen
Of course this will need good servers with good hardware specs and good amount of RAM but that is what most good shared hosting accounts provide today.

That's correct! Probably, if you understand that, I will open a secret... we just don't want to have big problems with big users :-) Sometimes, when a project becomes popular, server loading is too high. Any script will execute slow - but not everybody understand that he must upgrade the hardware, not software :-) Of course, using native procedures and database requests should give good results even on large amount of data... but we are just planning to make miniBB as "software for ages" - for example, big amount of posts produces some special "archiving" feature, which is not ready yet, when, for example, you may separate old posts from new and make loading of database more faster. We are still working on that - and just don't want to propagate miniBB as superb script for large forums this time. But we are having this in mind :-)

Check, for example, russian forums on WASM or even ForumForever - 70,000 and 150,000 posts are not bad, but Statistics, for example, is sometimes loaded too slow. Just because mySQL is not able to handle inner selects or count() operations on large amount of data...

well, how to say thanks :)

stop me if I am taking this discussion too far. but I think any person interested will get some light from what we are discussing :)

actually with the latest hardware , which quite a bunch of budget, but good, hosts are providing like dual xeon and 1-2 gb ram, are quite enough for a compact script like minibb to handle the so called "large " loads - I beleive so.

even with the archiving features , which can mainly be a consuming factor if the "search" is used but then external search tools can be adopted which does not lessen the glory of minibb, as search tools are meant for that and they specialize in them. even if that is not i think minibb wont be exceptionally slow provided the hard ware spec are good and how many concurrent searches it can handle will depend on the hosting a/c , vps will be better and ded server will be the best :) ( and for that matter really "big" sites use ded server )

once with one perl script the author said his script is suitable for some 1000+ posts w.r.t search, but he said that probably in 98 and today I find that his script can easily handle in reasonable fast time 10000+ posts. :)
i do not know whether he knows this or has tested for himself.

whether minibb will be multiple database compatible in future like postgres/others and whether postgres/others can address such issues better I am not sure - the developers ( I mean Team :) ) will know better, of course.

thanks again for clearing some of my doubts and the discussion .

Finishing the started... I think, on a very FAST machine, having average amount of posts, you will be surprised how miniBB loads... I saw it once - when the page was opened faster than I heard the "clack" sound from the mouse's "click"... ;-)

thats what I mean - :)

I guess minibb is mini in its weight only but equally maxi in handling loads :)

I tested those above two forums - I find no performance differnce in comparison to some of the very large vbb or phpbb baords even in terms of search / stats.