pros and cons flat file message board?

[the80s]

I was reading [webmasterworld.com...]
in particular isitreal's comment: "If you are expecting a lot of traffic you probably want to look into the flat file options in phpbb, that's supposed to drastically reduce server load, that's how WebmasterWorld does it too. "

What exactly is a flat file system? I wonder if vBulletin can be changed to that system.

thanks!

[txbakers]

flatfiles are just plain text files. The messages come in the top and go out the bottom and read by the php/perl/asp program from top to bottom.

Database systems are more efficient for the server and offer more flexibility, but are harder to manage and setup.

PhPBB is a good database based bulliten board.

[jdancing]

One problem with PHbb is that google has lots of problems indexing it. If you have a few bucks, get vBulletin, much more powerful and google gobbles up the posts.

[the80s]

isitreal mentioned that phpBB has a flat-file feature...anyone know how to 'invoke' that?

Thanks.

[isitreal]

It's a mod, just spits out html files I think, then instead of phpbb having to dynamically generate old threads, it just delivers the static html, or at least I seem to remember that's how it works.

During development of phpBB2 a recurring issue of server load has cropped up. phpBB 2.0.0 differs from many of its contemporaries by doing many more tasks at runtime. While this allows for simpler upgrade and modification paths it also leads to a greater strain being placed on the server. To help reduce this issue a cacheing template system was created based on work by Crimsonbane. This stores a compiled version of each template resulting in a generally significant reduction in server load and perhaps page generation time.

Two versions of the cacheing system are contained in this directory, one uses flat files the other a MySQL database. Testing has shown that, in general, the average virtual host seems to show better performance with the flat file solution. However this may not be the case for your system, so please feel free to try both.

In both cases you need to rename your existing template.php script (in includes/) and replace it with whichever template_*.php you want to try.

src code here: [tecfa.unige.ch]

I'd forgotten about this, the explanation above is pretty clear, it's cutting down a huge amount of processing by simply caching the output html pages, not assembling and loading all those tpl components, each tpl is one diskaccess.

[Farix]

I hang around the phpBB community and know for a fact that isitreal is wrong in that phpBB has a flatfile option. There isn't even a flatfile MOD available that I know of. As mentioned above, there is an optional file base template cache system, but all of the forum data is still stored in a SQL database.

[isitreal]

Two versions of the cacheing system are contained in this directory, one uses flat files the other a MySQL database.

I'm not wrong, I'm just quoting directly from the page above. If this page is wrong then it needs to be fixed/updated.

If this mod which they say exists doesn't exist then tell these guys to change this wording, it says they have a flat file system in plain english, I've never used it, but I've read about both on that page and elsewhere.

If you are connected with the phpbb scene them tell these guys to stop saying there is this mod if it doesn't exist.

[Farix]

That is a cache system to speed up processing. It works similar to the cache of your web browser. The data is still stored in the database from which the cache files are generated. phpBB does not use flat files to store forum data like UBB. However your original comment did imply that flat files are used to forum store data.

[isitreal]

Technically correct, thanks for clarifying it, I've never used this, it's just something I came across, then the guy asked, nobody answered. By the way, does the flat file caching system work well?

[Farix]

That largely depends on the activity of the board. Most boards will receives some benefit from using one of the template cache systems. Only on very active board that get 30 posts or more per minute are the benefits relatively negligible. But even then, you will still get a benefit from the cache system on less active or inactive threads.

Since using a template cache system is generally beneficial to a forum, phpBB 2.2 is going to incorporate the file-based version into its core code.