I've always known that the Memberlist page was a slow loading page, especially once you start customization the search. What I didn't know was how slow it got once you started getting to page 5000+. Basically the higher the page number, the slower it got. I realized this when I saw a bunch of bots going crazy on the memberlist page trying to index those high number pages which takes a long time to load and slows down the site. After a few hours worth of research, I found a solution to this problem which not only results into those high numbered pages loading so much faster but the entire memberlist is a lot faster now which should definitely increase the overall site speed.

Here's an example of a few pages before and after:

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/memberlist.php
Before: 0.467 seconds
After: 0.299 seconds

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/memberlist.php?page=2#search
Before: 0.491 seconds
After: 0.256 seconds

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/memberlist.php?page=5000#search
Before: 2.533 seconds
After: 0.419 seconds

https://www.vizzed.com/boards/memberlist.php?page=11360#search
Before: 12.437 seconds
After: 0.604 seconds

And sometimes that last page I linked to would take up to 40 seconds to load and when bots are hitting those pages lots at a time, it can slow down the site. It makes perfect sense though since it has to go through 500,000+ users.

Any time I optimize a page on the site this greatly, you'll also notice the rest of the site being a little faster. When a page is sucking up serious resources, it slows down the rest of the site since the rest of the site sometimes has to wait until that resource sucker is done.

I plan to give the same treatment to the Retro Game Room and any other pages with page numbers. If anyone notices anything weird about the memberlist or something that no longer works, be sure to let me know right away.