Making a laravel feed faster via better SQL fetch ?

Hi,

for a school project I've been making this feed. but I find it very slow. and I was thinking on forcing some more processing on the SQL part instead of processing it on the php side

I'm using the search thingy from nicolaslopezj . and that is fast as hell. So I'm olmost certain that it's the php code :)

And the algorithm isn't even great, so I could use another opinion/tips&tricks for the following code?

public function feed() {
    // pagination stuff
    $perPage = 15;
    $page = (Input::has( 'page' )? Input::get( 'page' ) : 1);
    $offset = ( ( $page - 1 ) * $perPage );

    // feed start
    $feed = new Collection();
    // start arrays
    $posts = new Collection();
    $stories = new Collection();
    $groups = Auth::user()->groups;

    // check if user has friends
    if (Auth::user()->friends()->count() != 0) {
      // get from good relationship
      $friendCollection = Auth::user()->friends()->Where( 'relationShipStatus', '>', '50' );

      // get all posts
      $posts = Post::whereIn(
        'user_id', $friendCollection->lists( 'id' )
      )->orWhere( 'user_id', Auth::user()->id )->get();

      // filter out where no group nor in story
      foreach ($posts as $index => $post) {
        if ($post->Stories()->count() > 0) {
          unset( $posts[$index] );
        }
        if ($post->Group()->count() > 0) {
          unset( $posts[$index] );
        }
      }

      // get those stories
      $stories = Story::whereIn(
        'user_id', $friendCollection->lists( 'id' )
      )->orWhere( 'user_id', Auth::user()->id )->get();
    }

    // merge together
    $posts->isEmpty() ?: $feed = $feed->merge( $posts );
    $stories->isEmpty() ?: $feed = $feed->merge( $stories );
    $groups->isEmpty() ?: $feed = $feed->merge( $groups );

    // sort by updated date
    $feed->isEmpty() ?: $feed = $feed->sortBy( 'updated_at' )->reverse();

    // apply pagination
    $userFeed = new Paginator( $feed->slice( $offset, $perPage, true )->all(), $feed->count(), $page );
    return $this->RespondWithPagination( $userFeed, $feed->count(), [ 'data' => FeedTransformer::transformCollection( $userFeed ) ] );
  }

all models can be found here: https://gist.github.com/285082ae6005a77e2c1e.git