FIXED IT!
Just need to add some extra proxy settings to my sites configuration in nginx once I was on a suitably up to date version. 
Thanks for the pointers. 
What were those "extra proxy settings"?
I'm assuming they were these:
# Socket.IO Support
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"
Yes, that's them alright.
@Ezra-Sharp What's your nginx version? Should be > v1.3.13
Nginx 1.4.7
Hm... got a link to your site running live? I'd like to see this for myself...
@julian im having the same problem but for apache, i need some help pls
@Watchopolis Hm, I'm getting a websocket error. Did you follow this guide to set up the proxy for Apache?
@julian yes i followed everything step by step,
look here on the sidebar stats, the numbers are loading after 6 seconds when the page fully loads
btw i dont have proxy_wstunnel installed because i am using vestacp
if i follow this guide will it break my vestacp ?
@Watchopolis The websockes connection is probably not establishing because you don't have that module installed. Perhaps the folks at Vestacp can help make them place nicely together?
@julian pfff vestacp support is soooo bad.. instead i will create a snapshot of my droplet and then try to install the wstunnel module, if anything breaks i can revert back
i will message back if it works or not
I have those same settings and also getting really bad performance.
