Hosting and cache recommendations

[esljosh]

Hello,

I am working on re-designing my site and have found your plugin to be wonderful, but I am noticing that my site runs very slow now (About 10 seconds to load the homepage). I am working on trying to figure out the root cause of the issue and I can't seem to figure it out. We can talk about this if possible, but I really wanted to know what you recommended for the following.

Hosting Company and a Cache plugin.

I want to know what is the best environment to run s2member in to make sure that it isn't just a bad hosting company or bad cache plugin causing this issue.. Additionally, I have upgraded to the latest version of s2member (I just updated today).

Thanks,

[Cristián Lávaque]

Hi Josh.

The slowness may be due to a conflict with another plugin. You may want to disable other plugins and see if at some point speed picks up.

It could be a hosting issue, yes. At http://www.websharks-inc.com/ near the bottom of the homepage, you can see a couple hosting companies Jason recommends.

Quick Cache is a caching plugin also developed by Jason. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-cache/

I hope that helps.

[esljosh]

Cristian,

Thanks for the reply. I am using Bluehost (reccomended on the site you mentioned). Is there anything I need to do in cPanel or call them about to increase my chances of reducing load time? I just installed Quick Cache and that helped some as well.

Thanks,
Josh

[Cristián Lávaque]

I'm glad Quick Cache helped.

Have you tried disabling other plugins? There may be a conflict that's causing this load time issue.

[esljosh]

Cristian,

Yes, I have tried un-activating everything except s2member. This lowered the latency, but the latency for 2 requests being made were still an issue. First was the request for the domain and the other was for the skin of the template.

I have seen more of an increase after removing the filtering on the s2member plugin for feeds and searches. This hasn't totally resolved the issue, but seems to of cut the latency in half.

I am still wondering if there is anything I need to do with my hosting company to increase my processing.

Thanks,
Josh

[Cristián Lávaque]

I'll ask Jason to comment what could be done about the hosting service.

About the template's skin, maybe it's the theme slowing things down. Did you try changing to a theme like TwentyTen?

What Alt. Views setting is the one that sped it up for you and which one seemed to be the slowest?

[esljosh]

The template isn't the issue cause when I turn all my plugins off it loads just fine... unless s2member doesn't like the template I am using.

As far as I can tell, removing all filters so everything runs through searches and feeds is the best.

One more major thing to note that isn't really related to the page load time is the fact that when Quick Cache is installed and activated, it removes the s2member option all together in the sidebar. When this happens I can only access the General Options for s2member by going to my installed plugins and clicking on the settings link for s2member. This is probably an oversight since the author is the same. *I am running the most up to date version of both s2member and Quick Cache.

Thanks,

[Jason Caldwell]

I'll ask Jason to comment what could be done about the hosting service.

About the template's skin, maybe it's the theme slowing things down. Did you try changing to a theme like TwentyTen?

What Alt. Views setting is the one that sped it up for you and which one seemed to be the slowest?

That's a tough question, because there are just so many things that can be done to optimize a website, it's difficult to know in this specific case ( i.e. without having done a full review myself ), to know what move to make first. I can make some general recommendations, but that's about it.

Generally speaking, your hosting company is probably NOT the problem, it's probably your site. That's not to say that a good hosting company ( i.e. server selection ) won't make a huge difference, but more often than not, when a site is slow, it has more to do with the way it's coded/configured than anything else. Especially when/if you're slow before your site is even live ( i.e. not under a heavy load yet ).

In certain cases, when issues ARE related to a hosting company, they often have to do with your MySQL database or Apache server configuration. Since WordPress is a database-driven publishing platform, a good "dedicated" MySQL server will help tremendously on a large site with lots of traffic. Either that, or a really good caching plugin like Quick Cache with a configuration that suits your site and optimizes things nicely.

Having an experienced WordPress developer do a full review of your site is a VERY good idea, as there are MANY little things that can be done, which make a HUGE difference collectively.

Here are some articles that I recommend:
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Optimization
http://codex.wordpress.org/Category:Wor ... timization

In the case of s2Member, Alternative View Protection will cause your site to slow down if you have LOTS of protected content. This is a known issue that we're trying to improve upon with each new release. If you have more than 1000 Posts/Pages/Categories, I would recommend turning off s2Member's Alternative View Protection to help optimize your site. Also, WordPress in general can become slow on sites with lots of Posts/Pages, particularly if your Permalink structure is not well optimized. See: http://www.cloudcomputingetc.com/2011/0 ... e-for.html

---

For high traffic sites ( i.e. more than 200k visitor/month ).
I recommend a server cluster, or a cloud computing model, combined with a dedicated MySQL server running on a dual core processor ( or better ) with lots of RAM ( i.e. 4GB+ ). This way high traffic spikes on the cloud ( aka: grid/cluster ) won't hurt performance, because most cloud computing models can scale up automatically, allowing good performance, even when under a heavy load. The dedicated MySQL server needs to be tuned for a large number of connections and optimized overall, in terms of configuration.

For cloud computing, I recommend Rackspace Cloud Sites, or Media Temple's (gs). If you go with Media Temple's (gs), be sure to buy a MySQL Grid Container as well, this will give you a dedicated MySQL server as I recommended above. MySQL is a common bottleneck for sites powered by WordPress.

For moderate traffic sites ( i.e. less than 200k visitors/month ).
If you just want blazing fast speed, go with a dedicated server from a reputable hosting company. This way you're not sharing resources with anyone else, like you would if you were on a shared hosting platform, or sharing resources on a cloud computing model. In other words, if a cluster of servers ( or a cloud computing model ) is not needed for super high traffic, then your best bet is stick with a dedicated server to maximize speed. Just be sure to get a dedicated server that can meet your needs now, and also give you room to grow. A dedicated server has a limit, when you reach that limit, you'll need to go into a better dedicated server, a cluster of servers, or a cloud computing model. So the trick with a dedicated server is to choose one that is powerful enough to keep you fast under a heavy load, because a dedicated server ( although very fast ), does not have the ability to scale up automatically under a heavy load like a cluster of servers does, or a cloud computing model does.

Please understand that both of these are VERY generalized recommendations. I would always suggest that you consult with a hosting company about your needs, and/or employ a developer to review the structure of your site and give you a personalized recommendation, based on that review.

[Jason Caldwell]

when Quick Cache is installed and activated, it removes the s2member option all together in the sideba.

Did you try clearing the cache again? When you have a cache plugin running, and you make changes to your site ( i.e. add/moving/editing ), you'll need to clear the cache each time. Otherwise, your site won't be updated until the cache expires, which might take an hour or more, depending on configuration.

Also, I've seen some site owners that have trouble like this when they are using the s2Clean theme, or another theme which has different Sidebar panels, which are loaded dynamically, based on a whether a User/Member is logged-in, or not. For example, the s2Clean theme has two Sidebar panels. You could add a widget to one of them and it would display if you're logged in, but NOT display if you're NOT logged-in. Is it possible that something like this is affecting you?