Hi everyone,
I'd like to announce my new extension QuickInstantCommons [1]. Basically it
is a version of InstantCommons, except fast.
I used [[List_of_governors_general_of_Canada]] as a test page (85 images)
with caching disabled. Initial results were very promising:
* Vanilla MediaWiki: 1038.2 seconds (17 minutes)
* This extension (when it isn't able to prefetch): 18.5 seconds (56 times
as fast)
* This extension (when it is able to prefetch): 1.1 seconds (943 times as
fast)
Also it supports thumbnailing files even if you're missing the media
handler extension for the format in question (but only in a limited way).
So for example, you can still see SLA files, even if you don't have
Extension:3D installed (but the interactive features don't work).
It does a bunch of things to speed things up - but the primary things are:
* Use HTTP/2
* Avoid unnecessary HTTP requests
* Attempt to guess what images will be used on the page based on the
previous version of the page, and prefetch those images.
If you're currently using InstantCommons/ForeignAPIRepo, consider trying
the new extension out and let me know what you think!
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuickInstantCommons
--
Brian
p.s. I hope extension announcements are on topic here. I've seen other
people do them from time to time, but not in a while.