Thread

Hi there,

I just converted a flat/static site to EE roughly a month ago and the site is now relatively slow. Site is here. It receives roughly 3500-5500 visits per month (2500-3500 unique).

I added {elapsed_time} to the footer and most pages are reporting 1-3 seconds but it takes longer than that to load. My understanding of this is that the 1-3 seconds is how long EE takes and the rest of the time has something to do with the server.

Additionally, I’ve also done the following (per this help page):

- enabled query caching
- enabled template caching
- enabled Dynamic Weblog Query Caching (which I may have to turn off if the client starts using expired entries)
- and of course, liberal use of Query Disabling

Enabling Dynamic Weblog Query Caching has helped a tad but not a whole lot. I did enable Gzip as well.

The site is currently running:

- PHP 5.2.5
- EE 1.6.8
- and runs on a Windows server (not my choice!) with limited access to server outside of FTP and a sorry excuse for a control panel.

I should also note that EE’s CP is also a tad slow, but it’s mainly the front-end I’m concerned with at this point.

Was wondering what else I can do within EE, if anything, to improve performance? If there’s not much else to do within EE, what’s recommended in terms of what I can ask the host to check and/or do?

Thanks!
.angie

I added {elapsed_time} to the footer and most pages are reporting 1-3 seconds but it takes longer than that to load.

That points to a possible issue with PHP: EE gets the data from the db, assembles it and starts the output. As far as EE is concerned it’s work is done at this point.

My understanding of this is that the 1-3 seconds is how long EE takes and the rest of the time has something to do with the server.

Exactly.

Was wondering what else I can do within EE, if anything, to improve performance?

Caching can help some, obviously (although that’s by no means a given), and I suppose you have read this article? Everythin else would probably involve tweaking the server, above all making sure that PHP runs properly (and speedily). This is a somewhat common issue on Windows servers.

Thanks Ingmar. I’ll have the web host take a look at server settings. (and yep, read that article too.)

Cool. Just keep us in the loop, please.

Okay, this host isn’t helping my client a ton. All they’ve done is provided a link to their PHP info page (not sure if I should post that here or not; let me know if it’ll help). I do know it’s a shared host and the one thing they did recommend is moving to a different server to see if that helps with resources (although they charge for that migration). Any other suggestions? I’ve suggested to this client that they move to a different host.

I would agree with your suggestion to change hosts. The current host’s sole recommendation to change servers essentially indicates that they have too many people on one server, know it, and don’t intent to do anything about it.