[SOLVED] usability issues

Hi there,

Desperately need an advice, especially from members who have 500+ online-active CB users. have you ever had any problems with CB usability caused by joomla issues?

I've been told by one developer that because joomla (and CB is joomla based) has a complicated data storage, its own limitations and also because it makes too many database quires that will badly affect site performance and usability say if there 200-500 active users online, and it can be avoided by data, data access and data storage restructuring before site goes live, otherwise it would require optimization or server build up later.

i am designer, not developer, but still a little bit skeptical, my guess is that community driven sites are meant to handle big number of users online, either members or visitors, and if joomla gives any issues usability wise it would be somehow addressed?

So any experience share or advice or warning is very much welcome and thanks everyone very much in advance

Nino

We have 528,660+ registered users. A good bit being active. Certainly more than 200-500 active at once. We are running Joomla and CB. If that's not proof enough that Joomla and CB can handle a large userbase then I'm not sure what is, lol.

Of course for such a large userbase you need a server that can handle it. In our case a dedicated one. For a 200-500 active userbase some budget hosting packages should be fine. It all depends on the performance of the server and what all you have installed.

The more you install the less performance you're going to get in ratio to your server. For example if you've a budget host and you install 20 extensions (large extensions, smaller ones typically have no impact) then expect performance to tank as that host can not provide the resources your site is demanding and it will bottleneck at the CPU most likely.

No matter what you do or use you will have to optimize later. For example as you get your site where you want it you'll want to add custom database indexes to cover your most common queries to speed them up. You may want to enable/disable certain heavy processing features as needed, etc..

Query count is not really an issue. It's the performance of the queries. If I make 10,000 queries, but they're all at 0.00010ms (1s total for all 10,000) then it's still fine as they're fast enough that they're in and out of the process nearly instantly. Joomla 3.x introduces some pretty nice debugging for queries that can help you optimize and even suggests indexes and callstacks for queries to see where you're bottlenecking.

In short you don't have anything to really worry about as long as you've realistic expectations. Don't expect a budget host package to run a community like Facebook as it's not happening. Always remember you get what you pay for and the cheapest hosting is not always the best option. Pick a host that allows scaleability. Meaning start with a small hosting package and move up as your site demands more resources; contact them and ensure they make this process easy as some hosts will shut you down if your site becomes too demanding, this is bad; they should communicate with you and get you on the right package when needed.

thank you very much! that really helped and made things much more clear for me