Moving Forward - Fri, 20 Jun 2008

I’ve been quiet (on this blog) for the last few weeks.

What I’ve been doing is taking some time to optimize this new blog the best it can be. I’ve removed some plugins that are expensive in terms of loading time, implemented caching correctly, optimized database calls, and tweaked some internal slowdowns in WordPress. In theory it’s now as good as it can be, and averages about one second in real response time, which is quite acceptable for WordPress.

The folks at IXWebhosting couldn’t find the direct cause of the original slowdown. They thought it might have been some abuse of the mySQL server that they had caught and stopped. But my Behold blog was still horribly slow several days after that, and I had determined the cause was slow page loading, and not the SQL requests.

But that problem went away and the blog was running fine. Then a few days ago, I had 12 hours of 15 to 30 seconds page loads. This one was different and was not file loading related. I’m not sure what it was, maybe slow mySQL server response. But that again magically repaired itself, and again the support team could not find the cause.

Another thing I looked at over the last 2 weeks was possibly changing web hosts. I looked at various VPN (Virtual Private Network) hosts and even Dedicated Hosting. I was surprised to find that shared hosting is on average, actually faster than VPN and the least expensive Dedicated Hosting plans. That’s because Shared hosts usually use very powerful servers to serve several hundred websites. Those sites on average use little load. The shared hosting companies (the good ones at least) make a point to ensure none of their servers get too overloaded, and will move things around to keep their clients happy. My conclusion was at this point to stick with IXWebhosting, at least while they can support the load on my site. They mostly fit my needs, and my experience has not been bad with them, other than the slowdown glitches. I’m hoping that if that problem rears its head again, we’ll eventually track it down. But until then, I’ll try to keep moving forward.

What I’ve got now at least is this blog in nearly final form. Next I’m going to finish my customization of the Behold Forum. It uses bbPress and will have a unique and tight integration with WordPress, sharing logins, searches and look and feel.

Let’s see if I can push myself and finish that within a week. It will be nice to open the Behold Forum again.