Need the software to go faster, suggestions?

So for almost 3 years now, I've been using Dolphin for my network.. It was a rough start, with server issues, hosting issues, and angry users. Now on a dedicated server with 12,000 members, the site is trekking along. However, it's slow! Less than 40 users, the site is nice and speedy.. When it gets to 60, it starts to slow down.. Topping out at 80 users and then crawling! 

Is there anything I can do to get this faster? 

Today I looked through the forums and made sure that the server was set up properly. (http://www.boonex.com/n/500_Speed_Improvement_of_Dolphin_) 

I also tried the .htaccess file edits, which helped out a lot actually, and now my network is crawling with 100 users instead of 80! (http://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/Need-for-Speed-.htm)

But at one time, when I first installed and set up Dolphin to migrate my site, it had over 400 users on at once, it was so slow, but that is what is possible, if my users didn't get frustrated at the speed just going to the front page. Help please :( I need some speed.. (not the drug!) lol

http://gtmetrix.com/

Run a test there and start optimizing from the top of the list

I implemented memcache for everything and saw a considerable improvement in server load. I'm also now using Cloudflare which again helps take the heat off my dedicated box as well. :) Both were painless to setup and test. Cloudflare takes a week or so to build up the cache so give it a month or so.

 That's a great thing to get started on, thank you!

 I've been thinking about Cloudflare for a while.. I think I'm going to give that a try too, thanks!

I was just going to suggest that to you. I have  a client that switched to cloudflare and his site boosted in speed a rather large amount.

We are using Cloudflare.com, no memcache, PHP 5.3 and we got a score of 97% on gtmetrix.com.

If you are running PHP 5.3 you have to get the PHPRC file set-up right.

We did try to follow some of the suggestions on here and it went down to 86% without Cloudflare.  We did have a small problem with Cloudflare not allowing our videos to convert.  But, after adding a rule to allow ffmpeg.exe to run outside of Cloudflare - it worked just fine.

Also, with Cloudflare - it will take a few days to getting it all cached and to work faster.

Also, the spammers went from 30-40 a day to nill using Cloudflare. We blocked China, Russia, Nigeria and a couple of other countries with a bunch of spamming operations.

 it's good to hear good things about this service, I looked at them a little over a year ago and hesitated because I didn't see any other sites using their service.. I'm going to try out their free package first.. 

 yikes! What kind of rule did you set up for that the videos, a page rule? My members love the videos, so that may be an issue.. I get so much spam, I hope this helps cut that down too.. Great to hear your experience with them is good!

I would suggest to try LiteSpeed or Nginx webservers.

We also have some instructions for Nginx for Dolphin: http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/TutorialHowToInstallDolphinOnNginx 

 Been thinking about changing to Nginx, but One thing to keep in mind before enabling Nginx is how PHP is handled with it. When using Nginx a set number of PHP processes are started up for every user a domain is hosted under. The same number are started regardless of how many domains are hosted for it. As such, if you have 10 domains spread across 10 separate FTP users you'll get 10x as many PHP processes as you would otherwise get. So, if Nginx is starting up 5 PHP processes, you would end up with 50, which would eat up a considerable amount of memory. The best configuration when using Nginx is to consolidate your domains under one FTP user. You should definitely do this prior to switching to Nginx. Also keep in mind that the number of PHP processes that spawn per user is automatically scaled with the amount of memory your server is set to use, so you will need to increase your server's memory allocation.  This is what I learned with talking to folks that know a bucnh more than I do about Nginx.  But, if you know these limitations and can adapt around them(which should b e realitive easy) - you should have a kick-ass set-up as Alex stated.

Also note:  I understand that nginx does not read .htaccess files! As such, most web software that utilizes them will be "broken" immediately upon installation without additional work. H

 Can you give me an example of how you created your page rule? I may not have done mine right. I put:

 Hi Tony,

Here is the rule I used that worked for me. Also it takes 24-48 hours to sometimes work right with Cloudflare:

 Thanks! I scored a 97% on gtmetrix too with CloudFlare. Need to specify some image sizes and minimize unused css to get to 100%.

As usual Nginx consume less memory than Apache.

The number of PHP processed can be configured depending on the site load for each site, or if you want one web-user to serve all site's - then it is also possible.

If you have other software on the site - it can be a problem - you are right, since no all script have Nginx rewrite rules.