Large site dissection
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- itscoolbananas
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 83
- Thanks: 0
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Hello people,
I ve been building a community based website a rockettheme tamplate "refraction" it has business directory with althacontent com, social network with jomsocial com, events manager with eventslist com.
The site seems be loading really slow and the location for this venture is south east asia so the tipical connection speep is not so good. The combination of these 2 factors is a total disaster at the moment. I ve tried various components if not all to compress and speed up the site but its not made much difference for the end user.
I am now planning to start all over and built the site over 1 domin & 2 subdomins..
-main domain will have directory and various articles
-subdomain ( www.event.etc ) will hold eventslist
-subdomin (ww.social.etc) will hold jomsocial
Now i am also thinking of combining the sites with Jms Multisite for joomla for multisite user registration..
Do you think this will help my project?
If anyone has any tips or ideas on how to make this work better and faster it would be really appreciated.
Thank you
Itscoolbananas
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- Emma griffith
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 465
- Thanks: 0
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Hi itscoolbananas, I am very interested in if this discussion grows, for your own factors is it likely that it is all boiling down to server speed and connecting through a slow funnel into that country?
I am working on a large site as well at the moment, having a jomsocial component, extensions directory and template directory then moving over time to a large article directory powered by K2 although that would be some time until you could say it is extensive.
After building 80% of it I sat back and thought hmmm should I not of split that up over sub domains, for scalability and allowing the option of throwing parts on different servers.
Connection speed has me quite worried as the site will be targeted at the US, UK and AU with each targeted country having their own TLD.
At the moment my connection speed is fantastic as for 1 I am on pretty fast internet access and the site is sitting on a dedicated dev environment.
So in your case my initial thoughts are it is your funnel and the server it is sitting on, is there any option of placing the site on a better internet trunk or does it have to be hosted in SEA? Could it be for instance hosted in Singapore?
Or are you able to build the site locally then deploy to their server and have connection speeds tested?
It would be good to know what people think are the best practises on large sites and if it is wise to sub domain the core site sections.....
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- itscoolbananas
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 83
- Thanks: 0
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Thank you Emma for your interest.
I started building websited about a year ago in html as a hobby. At that time i wasnt familliar with joomla and i signed up with ixwebhosting in the US for an attractive offer. They have great customer service. However there are some downsides such as there no easy optimization option for the DB and i am having to use a joomla component which probably make the site a touch bit slower then it could be..
I believe the site is slow due to the amount of objects, scripts, css and js and thats why I am currently trying to dissect the site. However I am interested in trying other hosting providers more specialized in Joomla. Do you have any recommendations for joomla hosting?
It sounds as if our sites have a few similarities.. what`s your directory like? Do you have a good component for your indexing?
I ve been tracking the directory components for some time now. I did try K2 but i found lots of bugs with it.. The ALL Video pluging was not recognized as well as the SIG also the Directory index is not flexible from my point of view and project. Do you find it as good as they pitch it?? I think its god great potential but they re not quite there it ...
nice to meet you
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- Emma griffith
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 465
- Thanks: 0
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Hi again, I have a love hate relationship with Joomla Works, their support is so crap that it is almost non existent, I almost did away with K2 and no it is no where near as good as their pitch.
I suppose as we are only using K2 for articles that part of the site suits our needs, I have all video pro installed as the V2 and above release does not support the free version which it did in earlier releases.
I am still not happy with the layout of the K2 page, but that is more a template issue and will address that once I am through more of the tough development jobs on the site. They say K2 is a CCK component but really that is utter crap and you cannot use words like 'if you are familiar with Drupal's CCK then this is for you' As to be honest 'and I do love Joomla' but Drupal really is far superior in many ways and their CCK really is a true CCK especially in conjunction with the views component.
At the end of the day we are just using K2 for the category flexibility it offers I just hope it does not bite us in the butt later down the track.
Our directory we are using is Mosets Tree, it is the same component Joomla use for their JED and Best Of Joomla also use it for their directory. We did a lot of hunting and looking before choosing a directory component and to be honest I think Mosets Tree is the best out there.
With MT we only had to perform minor theme changes to output the results how we wanted and it also integrates with Jreviews everywhere plug in. The site uses Jreviews quite extensively and I cannot rave about that component enough, it is so flexible we have used it for both the template directory and the hosting directory both sections are completely built using Jreviews. The support is top notch, Alejandro the developer is a really nice guy and goes out of his way to support his product. Many developers could learn a lot from this guy and how to give support.
As for hosting, being Joomla has nothing really to do with it and companies use that statement as a marketing handle. It comes down to quality of hosting and this is in my own knowledge niche as personally my background is systems administration also being an MCSE. In my opinion ix webhosting is utter garbage and could be the main reason your site is so slow.
In my opinion I do not like shared hosting, has security issues, is often slow you have no control over what is run and how, no shell access and unless you have a personal website or a very low volume site I would stay away from shared hosts absolute.
It is about quality and if the site is business orientated or has a revenue model, and with what you are building by the sounds of it you need a VPS and the very least. You will hear people saying how great their shared host is and how reliable and blah blah - Two things one they have never had anything else so they know no different (if you have never had something you don't miss it) two they run small sites that receive little traffic and are a hobby.
If the site is commercial or business in nature it needs it's own space the only time I use shared hosting is in these cases. One it is my own client and they are using my hosting, I have two dedicated servers that run no more than 50 small sites they are lightning fast and the businesses on them pay for that speed. Two they are my shady sites that need little to no hosting power and I don't care if the loading speeds are down.
It is an easy equation in my opinion; site is commercial and the site is going to generate sales / leads 'VPS it'
The site is based on a social networking model, we are going to market the heck out of it 'VPS it with clear migration plan to Dedicated server'
The site is a low traffic site business orientated 'VPS it higher client rate.
Definitions - VPS is a new word for upmarket shared hosting. The only difference is you can allocate X resources to the VPS container and it is a virtual machine, pretty cool actually.
If I was to recommend a host to you depending on where you are located depends on whom I would suggest. If you were this side of the Pacific I would say me
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For Singapore I would use Web Visions For Australia I would use Web Visions or Digital Pacific - For US of A I like Rack Space and Media Temple I have had good dealings with for the UK I am not sure and looking into options at the moment
Most of the larger stable hosting companies would provide good VPS options just look at the fine print if a server is cut into too many VPS containers again you can experience memory and CPU issues no matter what they say.
From years of dealing with networks, hosting and WAN I have made the choice of using only dedicated servers and cutting my own VPS boxes, the only exception has been two VPS boxes I have with Digital Pacific that has been a so far so good relationship. So far nothing has stacked up to be as good as the dedicated boxes I have with Web Visions, but it is an expensive option.
When we launch our new site it will be hosted in the States (probably) still looking into that, scalability is your biggest concern if you are building a site that might get some traffic. If your site is not going to see much more than say 1k of visitors a day you could use VPS with a good provider as you can if you choose the right company just up the resources until it is at a point where you may as well dedicate it.
With small sites it really does not matter as they are easy to migrate but with larger sites that can be a total headache. Our site will end up running into the GB's of size and if all goes well could see hundreds of members and providers; do you really want to move that to a new server getting a headache thinking about it.
99% of the time a VPS is going to hold you in good stead for future scalability, you should have some idea of how the site will go from the client you are building it for. Most people have delusions of grandeur and think their site is going to be the next hot property when in fact most just do not take off.
Have a look at their target market, what is their marketing line and you yourself what do you think of their plans. VPS is pretty cheap these days and remember when ever possible host the site in the target market as it is that local market that have to connect to the site.
That also needs to be considered when building it, if I was building a site targeted at NZ I would have to be far more conscious of the target audience as so many are still on dial up access.
I hope this goes some way in helping your cause -
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- itscoolbananas
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 83
- Thanks: 0
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Yes it certanly has I ve now gone ahead with VPS and just about to migrate my site over to them .. Found a good deal with bobhost.. Hope they provide as good service, so far the admin has been great, the specs are good for the money
I ve also been looing at jreviews and will probaly add it v soon..
Once the site is up there in 2-3 days i ll send you the link so you an have a look
Thank you v much, you ve been more helpful then i could have ever expected
Itscoolbananas
ps i am going to add you as a frined here if you dont mind
Keep in touch
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- Emma griffith
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 465
- Thanks: 0
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Is no problem, funny thing is anyone who knows me knows my favourite expression I use it in emails, on the phone and when talking to people. That expression is 'Cool Bananas' I just thought that was funny seeing as that is pretty much your handle.
I hope the VPS goes well for you, is the console Plesk? Also if you are going to install Jreviews just remember you will need ioncube, json php extensions and php 5.2 or above most often these are not installed with your bare bones VPS configuration as they tend to use a standard CentOS install.
Not a bad price by the looks of it at bobhost, let me know how it all goes.
I would be happy to check out the site and can return the same if I ever get Bikin finished, ie is giving me the total willies, looked so reasonably good in Fire Fox, god I hate IE...
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- drsawbones
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 154
- Thanks: 0
- Joomla Adict
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itscoolbananas wrote:
Thank you Emma for your interest.
...At that time i wasnt familliar with joomla and i signed up with ixwebhosting in the US for an attractive offer. They have great customer service. However there are some downsides such as there no easy optimization option for the DB and i am having to use a joomla component which probably make the site a touch bit slower then it could be...
The letters in boldface above, is the root of your speed issues. I was on their servers, shared, for about 4 years. Over time things started to worsen. phpBB2 was hacked frequently, upgraded to 3 and it continued, but thru different means. osCommerce spammed and injected numerous times, Joomla 1.0 sites spam injected and admin hacked. One mail account wouldn't open so I wrote a ticket, their reply was to write another ticket to clean the 192,000 emails out of the inbox.
Last April after discussing the matter at JDay Las Vegas, the first thing I did when I returned home was order a self operated dedicated server and started to move about 20 websites over, 1 by 1. I just finished the last of these sites over the weekend due to another injection on an osC site and reports by the client after some research, they had discovered their site had been blacklisted on many search engines. After downloaded the sum of their site locally and scanning, it was again infected.
Since the move to the dedicated on another host, not virtual dedicated or shared, ALL of my sites on average load 10 times faster, no issues other then muhahahaha total control, total bliss, and the best Joomla! host ever.
The recent release of Rokgzip is working excellent now, and fast is now faster.
consider a move?
Cheers,
Doc
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- Emma griffith
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 465
- Thanks: 0
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As I stated earlier I think IX Webhosting is total garbage and here we go with more proof that it is true.
If you can afford dedicated hosting it is truly the best possible option for any serious website that has a revenue model, VPS is the next best thing.
Shared hosting is a bit like the local bus; it may get you there in the end but it is often overcrowded, runs slow, constantly stops, sometimes breaks down in mid transit and is a little smelly. Once you have your own car you wonder how you ever did take that bus.......
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- itscoolbananas
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 83
- Thanks: 0
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HAHAHAHA.. thats a good way ro put it!! hehehe... I am just getting my head around the control panel and waiting for the domain to migrate over .. so excited :cheesy: :cheesy:
I am sorry to hear about your problems drsawbones, dont think i got hacked with i was with them but I can be too sure about that.
Cant wait to see your site Emma
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