GD bbPress Toolbox

Booster is a performance-related GD bbPress Toolbox Pro feature added in version 7.0. Booster aims to solve the biggest issue with bbPress – relying on postmeta data for many queries, leading to a slow performance with big and large forums.

To do that, GD bbPress Toolbox Pro introduces new database tables for forums, topics, and replies, holding interconnections between forums, topics, and replies, and some additional data used in various queries. These tables behave as a cache, and they can be deleted and rebuilt at any time. Now, the plugin can replace some bbPress queries with modified queries that use these new cache tables instead of the postmeta table. Cache tables are indexed, use proper data types, and are fast for all kinds of join or search operations. This feature’s goal is not to replace or change how bbPress stores the data; cache tables are not replacing bbPress usage of the postmeta table.

Booster Feature is not making any lasting changes to the way bbPress works. It doesn’t modify any of the data stored by bbPress, and it can be enabled or disabled at any time, and the cache tables can also be removed, emptied, or recreated at any time. If you disable Booster, bbPress will revert to using normal queries and not suffer any data loss.

Currently, Booster replaces several queries in bbPress, and many queries related to GD bbPress Toolbox Pro, and in the future, it will increase the coverage of the supported queries. It will also expand the data cached in the cache tables.

There are no settings for GD bbPress Toolbox Pro related queries – the plugin replaces all supported queries by default. Regarding bbPress queries, two major queries are currently supported; for each one, there are options to enable/disable them. Both queries are used very often, and they make up the bulk of the queries run – a list of forums and a list of topics.

The speed gains with the queries boosting are huge, and some queries are 20-50 times faster when run via Booster! This might look crazy, but the speed increase grows with the size of the forums and postmeta table – the bigger the forums/website, the bigger are gains with the Booster because, for large tables, non-indexed queries tend to be very slow, making postmeta table use very bad idea in the long run. Hence, Booster is essential to make your forums faster.

To rebuild the cache tables, the plugin uses a series of queries, and they are quite fast. But, any time forums, topics, or replies are modified, the plugin will update cache data for affected posts. But, in case something is happening to cause problems with this, the plugin can rebuild cache tables daily (this can be disabled via settings).