[$300] Initial Page Load

[rootelement]

Looks like when you go to https://discussions.topcoder.com, it takes ~9seconds for the page to load. After a couple page loads, i sorted the load time descending and see this:

[jmgasper]

Contest https://www.topcoder.com/challenges/30154851 has been created for this ticket.

This is an automated message for ghostar via Topcoder X

[jmgasper]

Contest https://www.topcoder.com/challenges/30154851 has been updated - it has been assigned to obog.

This is an automated message for ghostar via Topcoder X

[jmgasper]

@atelomycterus - Can we make speeding this up top priority please?

[atelomycterus]

@jmgasper Yes, sure

[atelomycterus]

@jmgasper There are 2 main issues.

Screens

Recent discussion page with a topcoder DB dump from my local env.
I've made the screens from DEV for statistics. We can compare performance after deploying.

Before any changes :

Controller - FIXED

Please apply PR -#249. Thanks!
Discussion Controller executed 31-45 sec my local env. The time of execution was count of different Users on the recent page * 0,5 sec. It executes about 3-5 secs in DEV.

Vanilla loads a recent discussion page and joins a list of users. UserModel loads users and checks Photo.
This piece of code works about 0,5 sec per user.

if ($column == 'Photo') {
  if ($value && !isUrl($value)) {
	$value = Gdn_Upload::url(changeBasename($value, 'n%s'));
  } elseif (!$value) {
	$value = UserModel::getDefaultAvatarUrl($user);
 }
}

After commenting it DiscussionController for recent page executes <1 sec.

Page rendering

Page rendering is slow due to our custom Topcoder link. Each discussion was rendered about 3,2-3,8 sec. In DEV i think about 0,5-1 sec per a discussion. Before rendering User link we request Topcoder API (Roles, Picture, Member rating) to apply proper css styles. We don't have cache for that.

Using default Vanilla function to render user link. The page was rendered 3 times faster.

In Dev Recent page is rendered about 20 sec, there are about 40 user links.

DEV

I did screens for statistics. So we can compare after fixing custom Topcoder link.

Recent page - about 40 user links:

https://vanilla.topcoder-dev.com/discussion/1715/home-challenges-forum-development-forums-sandy-forum-receiver-code-documents-new-discussio#latest - 1 user link:

https://vanilla.topcoder-dev.com/discussion/1633/review-time-extends#latest - about 25 user links:

https://vanilla.topcoder-dev.com/discussion/1838/test-editor-3333#latest 3 user links:

[atelomycterus]

@jmgasper I'm implementing cache in Topcoder plugin. Vanilla provides a cache layer.