# New to Discourse and find that my install is slow
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** unsupported-install
**Created:** [July 6, 2025, 12:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054 "2025-07-06T00:21:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hobbyDB](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hobbyDB)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 12:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/1 "2025-07-06T00:21:41Z")
We’ve been running our Discourse instance for a few months on [forum.hobbydb.com](http://forum.hobbydb.com) now to support our growing collectible database with a community (replacing various Facebook groups). While everything is functionally stable, we’ve noticed some performance issues — particularly around Lighthouse scores, which are currently hovering around 60%.
Some context on our setup:
- Discourse Version: 3.4.6 (latest)
- Deployment: Using Bitnami’s Discourse Helm chart
- Infrastructure: Entirely containerized, running on Kubernetes
- Specs: MS Azure 2xlarge (so should be able to automatically expand to 6 cores, 12GB of RAM and up to 2GB for logs)
We’re trying to figure out where the performance bottlenecks might be coming from, and how we can better optimize our deployment — especially for frontend performance.
Has anyone faced similar issues when running Discourse over Kubernetes (especially via Bitnami)? Any recommendations, tips, or known pitfalls we should look into?
Appreciate any advice or suggestions — we’re keen to improve the experience for our users.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 12:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/2 "2025-07-06T00:57:15Z")
Hi there, I’m just wondering, are the pages loading quite slowly for users? Or is it just the metrics showing less performance?
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### Author:  [@hobbyDB](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hobbyDB)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 2:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/3 "2025-07-06T02:22:32Z")
It is user experience and varies a lot, sometimes the speed is acceptable, sometimes it might take 20 sec for the page to load.
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 2:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/4 "2025-07-06T02:25:50Z")
Could it be a case of a network issue, like the server being hosted elsewhere?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 1:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/5 "2025-07-06T13:17:46Z")
Yes your instance is very slow. That’s not typical.
Bitnami is a non-standard third party install. Have you raised these issues in their community?
Some of these online benches don’t make sense for a Single Page App (like Discourse) because each client downloads most of the JavaScript on first visit. After that most page transitions should be near instant as many things are cached and only some specific content json is being retrieved from the server on most transitions.
(I believe CDCK is working on spreading that download beyond first page pull but that’s kind of getting off topic and it’s not your issue)
My instances are self hosted with the [standard install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true) with very modest hardware (4GB VPS) and fly 🚀.
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### Author:  [@Lilly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Lilly)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2025, 1:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/6 "2025-07-06T13:32:11Z")
> [@hobbyDB](#):
>
> Any recommendations, tips, or known pitfalls we should look into?
> [@Bitnami installations are unsupported](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bitnami-installations-are-unsupported/142538):
>
> Community support is only provided for installs that use the official instructions: [discourse/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md) If you have installed with Bitnami and are having trouble, then you need to either follow the instructions or get help somewhere else. Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-25T11:32:59Z (UTC) Last checked by @MarkDoerr 2026-03-19T23:46:16Z (UTC) play_button Check document
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### Author:  [@hobbyDB-U](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hobbyDB-U)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 5:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/7 "2025-07-21T17:57:21Z")
Our infra is on Azure and region is US. So it should be much of a problem.
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 8:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/8 "2025-07-21T20:30:26Z")
I guess now switching to a [standard install](https://meta.discourse.org/t/142537?silent=true) is even more necessary.
> [@Bitnami Discourse container image is deprecated](https://meta.discourse.org/t/bitnami-discourse-container-image-is-deprecated/374875):
>
> Looks like that after Bitnami was aquired by Broadcom, images such as Discourse Bitnami won’t be updated anymore. See [Upcoming changes to the Bitnami catalog (effective August 28th, 2025) · Issue #35164 · bitnami/charts · GitHub](https://github.com/bitnami/charts/issues/35164) for more information.
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 10:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-and-find-that-my-install-is-slow/373054/9 "2025-07-21T22:13:23Z")
It’s absolutely possible to get good performance for Discourse on K8 and Bitnami.
> [@hobbyDB](#):
>
> MS Azure 2xlarge (so should be able to automatically expand to 6 core.
For Discourse (or any RoR app) the single core speed is more important. Scaling is more important once your forum gets decent traffic.
What does mini-profiler say?