I would not get rid of your vBulletin license if it's giving you access to download latest vBulletin 3 versions. Been using vBulletin 3.7.7 for 3 days now after realising XenForo is just not suitable for using with my shared hosting at all. vBulletin 3 runs brilliant just like MyBB did before installing XenForo. vBulletin 3 also has 3 times the features XenForo has, and won't have for years to come yet. I've absolutely no regrets dumping XenForo and going back to using vBulletin 3.7.7. I'm glad I have in fact now. XenForo will give people problems that use Shared Hosting, it's not suited for it.
I would have to seriously question what kind of shared hosting you have if XF won't run properly on it. I have run XF on the most minimal of shared hosting one can get and had no issues whatsoever. That is with asmallorange.com.
There have been days when XenForo ran perfectly fine, fast even. But then other days when it's not doing so (which was more often). One thing I spotted which has never happened when using both MyBB before and vBulletin 3.7.7 now on my host. When I send tweets in Twitter (alone) it was bringing the forum to it knees using XenForo, often giving 503 timed out pages. Thing is, that doesn't happen using MyBB before or vBulletin 3.7.7 now sending both tweets into Twitter and Digs in Digg at the same time. It doesn't make a dent on forum performance using vBulletin 3.7.7 with every single feature in it maxed on server resources used. Instant page view marking and all the rest, done on purpose to test things with it e.t.c. It just seemed like I was having more and more trouble with downtime and slow loading using XenForo (all too often). Now you can blame the shared hosting, fair enough! But then you have to question how comes it can run vBulletin 3.7.7 "fully maxed" out and it runs like a dream no matter what I'm tweeting or digging into other SN sites, and also suffered from no down-time or slow pages loading since installing 4 days ago. XenForo was problematic on a daily bases with slow page loading and time-outs! This is something I watched and monitored over weeks, not days. I use Pro Shared hosting with NameCheap, not the best host I know. But you still have to go back and wonder how I was able to run MyBB on it for well over 12 months perfectly fine and vBulletin 3 now without issues. Maybe it could be more specific to my hosting setup, personally I think it has something to do with XenForo using "InnoDB tables" that my host doesn't like on shared hosting packages. Both MyBB and vBulletin doesn't use them and use MyISAM tables instead. What gets me is this, is so easy to blame problems on you using Shared hosting. That was pretty much the common response I kept getting from Mike at XenForo. But sometimes it seems like a lame excuse they use to get away from the fact there could be issues going on. Let me put it this way, why shouldn't XenForo run the same as MyBB and vBulletin on my shared hosting, both have more features than XenForo anyway! Also, most people don't rent VPS, they rent Shared Hosting and XenForo should work fine across the board with shared hosting set-ups as a result. It's their loss in the long-run if it doesn't, not mine because I simply stop using it and they lose a customer. The last thing I'll do now is start running around looking for another more expensive shared hosting server package to run XenForo, why should I when I've been using my current host running MyBB, vBulletin 3 and 4, plus many other forum and blog packages like WordPress perfectly fine for the most part with no major problems for 2 + years. Because of that I see XenForo as being the problem, not my shared hosting.
I'm currently testing a XenForo installation on a shared host. It's not huge, 657572 Posts in 26674 Topics by 1970 Members, but it's fairly busy. I'm also running the live SMF site on the same hosting package. Apart from a short period during the early hours when the backups kick in, both sites resolve instantly i.e. Page created in 0.174 seconds with 21 queries. SMF is lightweight and lightening fast and to be honest I'm finding XenForo is pretty much the same. vBulletin 4.x on the other hand was noticeably slower when I tried that out on the same host. In general my experience is XenForo is very efficient and runs well on any type of hosting package. My only complaint is that the pop-ups occasionally hang but that may be a browser issue.
Well it's odd really, because when I ran XenForo 1.1 Beta 4 and upwards before it went Gold. It ran pretty much like your saying, I even commented about it running well. Hardly any downtime, although sending tweets into twitter at times still posed the same problem depending how much traffic came in from it, I stopped doing it using XenForo. I think it could well be something more specific to my shared hosting, I won't rule that out. But after weeks of using XenForo and it becoming a daily thing with slow page loading lasting ages at times, tweets causing 503 pages. There's no doubt in my mind something wasn't right? I'd be incline to trash the server hosting blaming it on them and a shit service they offer. But it's hard to do that when you visit my vBulletin 3.7.7 forum installed now with all server intensive features activated in it (to the max). And it runs like I'm on VPS. Not forgetting I ran MyBB for 12 months without an issues, only getting the odd one or two you come to expect from time to time with hosting. I was even considering at one point, believe it or not. Because things was so bad on a daily bases. That my XenForo forum was getting DDoS attacks from some clown like AnthonyCea on a daily bases, mainly because of the the way pages seemed to take ages loading at times . Making it look that way due to it lasting hours. I'd be incline to say that IS NOT a browser issue at all, XenForo is just slow with those pop-ups when trying to do things like Add Links or Video Code using TinyMCE for example. Also, moderating moving threads using the inline pop-up editor is very slow at times I found if you select quite a few threads for moving onto another forums. Like a full page of threads, doing that could result in time-outs getting displayed.
I think you're dealing with a host-specific problem. I've carefully been documenting changes as I've transitioned from IPB to XenForo and I cannot find any evidence of anything in XenForo causing any bottlenecks. I used eAccelerator to cache opcode with IPB and after a week or so with XenForo, I wanted to try caching the backside with APC, instead. I yanked eAccelerator in lieu of APC. Testing them both, I found eAccelerator was infinitesimally faster caching opcode than APC. I then tested backside caching with APC and ultimately removed it. Kier called it, APC works well as an opcode cache and that's a good place to leave it. I installed Memcached and saw a small decrease in load, as a result. I then converted my database tables to InnoDB and saw a tiny reduction in load, which was actually the result I anticipated. Had the site been getting hammered with traffic at the time of the change, I would have anticipated more of a change. MyISAM writes data slightly faster than InnoDB tables. However, with MyISAM's table-level locking during a write process, that can start showing up as a bottleneck on a large and active forum. InnoDB utilizes row-level locking, which means multiple writes to a table can take place at one time. Before you suggest InnoDB's slower write is what was causing your problem, please remember we're talking about processes that take place in single-digit thousandths of a second. Unless your forum site is taking on considerably more traffic than I've seen in months past, I feel I can say with certainty that InnoDB writes have nothing to do with your slow response times. And by the same token, if your site is not taking on a lot of active traffic, InnoDB's row-level locking will never provide much advantage to you. The problem you have with benchmarking storage engines is they do not all shine in all areas. No two sites are ever going to be identical with respect to selects, inserts and updates, so it is nearly impossible to do real-world benchmark testing. In fine, you're going to struggle to find an application that will favor one storage engine over another, from one end of the database to the other. In most instances, a mix of the two is usually required to optimize everything. (Which is the method XenForo uses.) InnoDB data is written to fixed blocks, where MyISAM is generally written at the end of file. Because of this method, InnoDB is always going to be faster for multi-user concurrent access. If you are using database tables for static data, MyISAM will work well for you. If you are using database tables for frequently updating data, InnoDB will always be the way to go. If you are using your database for both types of tables, then you likely need to adjust your tables to use the storage engine that will work best in each. If data integrity is important, then InnoDB will always be the #1 pick, because it is transaction-safe, meaning data integrity is maintained from one end of the query process to the other. If disk space and RAM are marginal, MyISAM would get the nod. If you still believe the InnoDB engine is the root of all evil, be sure you never upgrade to MySQL 5.5 without specifically setting up MyISAM tables, as InnoDB is the default storage engine for that and all subsequent releases. (As this is getting far afield of the original topic, perhaps a move would be best?)
Recently my server box got a major overall. It was updated after they told me I was still running on an old shared box that hadn't been updated for ages. Now it uses this. MySQL version 5.1.56 Apache version 2.2.21 PHP version 5.3.8 I'm not saying I know for a fact InnoDB tables are at fault, I was just trying to put "two and two together" in what was so different about XenForo compared to MyBB and vBulletin (that being InnoDB tables). Just trying to find something majority different that might possibly be causing the root of the problems encounter so often on a daily bases. And the only real difference I could come up with was that used for database storage. It may have absolutely nothing to do with it all like you say, but on the other hand it could be the cause because of how they have database storage configured on shared hosting. Like you said, no two servers are the same so it's impossible to say either way.
Have split the issue of running XenForo on shared hosting into this new topic away from the litigation thread
Namecheap has sub-par hosting, and is really only made for entry level. Go with a real host and there will be a huge difference.
Just to say, I've not always been with NameCheap. Used ASO (ASmallOrange) and one or two others before. I used to use the same hosting company Brogan does on XenForo if he's still with them for shared hosting. That UK Hosting one. I left both because I didn't rate their hosting, ASO was nothing but problems, but that was a long time ago and they have improved since.
I don't know how my name was quoted in the first post but xf will certainly run on a shared hosting account just fine. If it's not running for you, I'd suggest getting a better host
I don't run XenForo anymore, I run vBulletin 3.7.7 and it runs purrr-fectly fine on my currrent same hosting package.
XF runs absolutely fine on shared hosting, if it doesn't you need a better host. It's as simple as that.
Doesn't matter either way to me. I use vBulletin now if you read the post above yours. Who cares anymore?
Well that all depends on which week one views your site. I'd give it a fortnight at most, you won't be using vBulletin then. I mean, we've been round and round and round with this one, it's not worth discussing. Your site will NEVER succeed while you keep deleting it.
I've noticed the popups loading slowly at times but that is usually when the server is getting a sudden rush of traffic and a lot of it, I also have Firebug enabled all the time and that seems to interfere with them as well. I have seen it working fine on other peoples shared hosting packages, if you want to consider a decent non oversold shared hosting package for using XF on you could try out these: http://wesh.co.uk/ his hosting is the best I have ever come across but it comes at a price which is to be expected with such a quality service, every site I have had on his servers has ran faster than when on my VPS and even my semi-dedicated server.
