Making an EE 1.x site run faster
Development and Programming
I have a very intensive EE site which utilizes like 50 weblogs on a single page. I’m trying to determine if it’s my hosting provider’s fault or EE’s for the server running slow. I’m also trying to determine is is the hosting server itself or possibly the mysql database server.
Literally on average this one page of weblogs takes 1 minute and 15 seconds to load which feels like an eternity.
Here are steps that I’ve taken on my end to ensure faster load times. Using the Firebug and YSlow plugs for FF:
• Used php function flush() to flush the buffering. • Implemented browser caching in the .htaccess file • Now using server-side compression • Added a far-future expire line in .htaccess. • Combined javascript files into as few external files as possible • Optimized images. • Combined css files into one single css file.
Web page compressed? Yes Compression type? gzip Size, Markup (bytes) 240,048 Size, Compressed (bytes) 14,062 Compression % 94.1
My biggest question out of all of this is, is there a way from within EE to help make it faster? Through Output and Debugging I’ve already used the compression option as well.
Thank you for any help!
I’ve attached the debugging information in a text file… this might help?
ExpressionEngine 1.6.9 Build: 20100430
Judging by your template debugging, I’d say you’re doing a pretty nice job considering how heavy the site might be. I might consider fresh variables instead of some of the embeds, depending on how you’re using them, as there is a more overhead in embeds than fresh vars/snippets.
Not knowing your server setup, MySQL might not be tuned well to take advantage of query caching, and on the Apache/PHP level, APC does wonderful things to cache all the files that are needed to run the app.
I hope my non-answer helps some. :D
Actually your answer helps. It confirms that it’s host gator’s fault. We’re on a shared server but Jesus… 1 min and 17 seconds for the site to pull up. Come on that’s ridiculous. I’m going to have them move our servers this is obviously a problem on their end. Thanks for your thoughts!
I’ve ruled out the server being slow. I basically created a new template void of any weblogs. And it rendered very fast. However, the template with a lot of weblogs on it renders very slow. So one thing I didn’t do before was attach the sql queries because now that I can confirm the template is loading fast, I can surmise that 1) It’s not a template problem 2) not a server problem.
But it could be a connection to the mysql server and it could be a plugin problem. So here’s my log for that. Maybe you can help me make some sense of it? ANY help is greatly appreciated.
View log here: DOWNLOAD FILE
Jeramiah
Are you caching any of your EE templates yet? (referring to EE’s caching mechanism, not altering cache settings in .htaccess)
Thank you so much for your reply. Your input has helped me understand how to streamline EE even further. This is what I’ve done:
SQL Query Caching: Enabled Cache Dynamic Weblog Queries? YES Allowed for template caching of the biggest pages with weblogs Query Disabling turned on for all elements I do not pull in.
I’m also using CloudFare CDN… even though it’s probably not the best, it’s something.
The page used to load in 1min 17seconds. It now loads in 1min 2 seconds. Ideally I’d like the page to load in under 4 seconds. So I can’t even say for sure that any of the things I just did really helped. I think what I will do first thing monday is contact Engine Hosting and see what they can do for this one specific client.
I do appreciate your help today though and I’ll tune my other sites using these steps!
Consider giving this a read as well 😊
http://www.solspace.com/downloads/PerformanceGuidelines.pdf
In particular, you seem to be in an edge case with hundreds of queries. Consider looking at some of Solspace’s performance-based add-ons mentioned in this document.
Erik thank you so much man. I really appreciate all this. I am looking into that document now.
Thanks Eric. That link was helpful to us as well.
Just kind of an update to this thread…
We’ve since moved to Engine Hosting and the pages without weblogs load super fast. Pages with weblogs have stopped loading in 1 min and 20 sec. on average to about 35 seconds. Of course we want to get that to under 5 seconds… but that’s progress.
I mean is it possible that EE just can’t handle the amount of weblogs that we have on our pages which can easily be 40 or more….
Jeramiah,
I would certainly say EE isn’t built or optimized for that type of page load.
Have you looked into the performance-based add-ons I suggested above? These two may be of interest:
But are those the best options for a page whose weblogs will be changing every day with content? My static pages load extremely fast.. it’s the pages that have weblogs that are lagging. Would you still suggest these add-ons?
But are those the best options for a page whose weblogs will be changing every day with content?
I believe both of these modules allow you to set expires to your desire. So the caches could be updated each day (example) if you desire. You’ll want to confirm this with Solspace or the respective add-on documentation.
Would you still suggest these add-ons?
I’ve personally never had a need for them and have thus not used them. I’ve spoken to people who’ve used them and everything I’ve heard is good.
Sounds like you might want to shoot Solspace an email and tell them a bit about your scenario and ask their thoughts. (Maybe include a link to this thread?)
Great idea Erik. I’ll give Solspace a shout out and then I’ll post their reply also on this thread in case anytone else runs into this problem. You’ve been such a help, thanks buddy.