D7: Plans for a stable release

Boost? I just looked back at notes from Drupal meetings (I am privileged to live in the same area with some full-time Drupal experts who share their tips at meetings), but I could not find exactly the notes that refer to this. Just from memory, I've heard rumor that Boost can create problems with a site and that best practice would be to stay away from this module. Instead, look into something like APC.

Quickstart has a feature that allows for checking the speed of each element across the site which pinpoints areas for speed improvement. As always, make sure the normal Drupal caches are activated. If you are using Panels for page building, you can also take advantage of additional caching within Panels.

wondering the same thing myself

me as well. anyway to help?

couturier,

Interesting. After reading your post I have found myself thinking about that rumor you're talking about and about problems the Boost module can cause for a site. Can you please try to recall more details about them?

Here is an update. I had a chance to ask the guys from Worx at my local Drupal users' group meeting tonight about why they warned me about Boost. These people work full-time in developing large, commercial Drupal sites, and the staff is active in contributing modules and patches. In past months, several staff members told me to use the SEO Checklist module to help improve both speed and SEO on a site. However, they told me to stay far away from the Boost module because it will introduce all kinds of problems.

When I asked tonight more details about what problems Boost creates, they said that their negative experience with it could have been a one-time situation based on how other modules were interacting with Boost and preventing changes from reaching the server. They also clarified that APC, which they use for all of their sites, is a code cache, while Boost is something completely different. Boost is a data cache.

Their recommendations, for good speed and caching options are a combination of all of the following:

• APC (code cache)
• Memcache (data cache)
• Varnish (for high-level websites, reverse proxy caching)

A description from the Varnish website - this is different from the link above - says, "Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator also known as a caching HTTP reverse proxy. You install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP and configure it to cache the contents. Varnish Cache is really, really fast and usually speeds up delivery with a factor of 10x - 300x, depending on your architecture." Varnish may not be necessary for smaller websites. Start with APC. Then, if needed, add Memcache. Then move on to Varnish as a final step, if needed. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can also help with speed for websites that reach audiences beyond a local region.

couturier,
Thanks for the details! I think that if we are talking about large, commercial Drupal sites, these recommendations are absolutely valid. However in my case (and I believe for lots of average Drupal sites) it is not possible to install your own packages to PHP. E.g. my hosting provided uses Xcache instead of APC.
Boost in turn requires only to .htaccess to work offering a real performance "boost" for anonymous users and for search engines crawlers. It can even make your site look like working during mySQL server outage.

So as you said it's different. And it's demanded.

Some Facts: Boost is not getting the love it needs right now [for many months - actually]!

Various 'Updates and Fixes' are simply being left as 'outstanding' in the Boost 'issues' Queue,
in fact, most date back for months. The last Boost updates were back 27 weeks in the past.

I have added 12 outstanding issues + fixes going back to May 2011.
I have dropped Boost, based on it's tested ‘instability’ and lacking support. (my own tests found issues with Boost)

No, my own site is not big, but I do have my own Linux server.

APC [and/or], Xcache [and/or], Memcache, [and/or] Varnish [and/or] Nginx will serve your needs better!
Boost was a great answer back then, but support has fallen behind, unless you have a hosted provider with forced access
to PHP back-dated to PHP 5.2 - or less!

Offical from PHP: Support for PHP 5.2 has been dropped!

For those with access to Nginx: There is also omega8cc's Nginx based "Speed Booster" method!
See: http://groups.drupal.org/node/157779

I dropped the Drupal Boost module in preference for the above Nginx "Speed Booster" -plus a self-modified version of D6's Cacherouter - using 'xcache bins'. For a clustered server, memcache would serve 'better'. (I use one server)

Current maintainers for Boost: http://drupal.org/project/boost

mikeytown2 - 572 commits
last: 27 weeks ago, first: 2 years ago
joshk - 1 commit
last: 2 years ago, first: 2 years ago
Arto - 73 commits
last: 2 years ago, first: 4 years ago

Boost: All issues
416 open, 1199 total
Bug reports
151 open, 489 total

I hoped to continue using Boost (works like a charm on a D6 site), but from this discussion it looks like it won't really be a stable option for D7 sites anytime soon... So for sites which don't have access to APC / Memcached, is there a way to utilise Xcache on D7?

Searching found me several solutions for D6 (and a big scandal on Cache Router module, which seems to have prevented further development of that for D7, what a shame).

If someone wants commit access for boost let me know