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By sprite on
The user experience of my Drupal web sites seems to be responsive enough, especially once the caching settings are adjusted to some extent.
However, what are methods for tuning PHP so that the Drupal administration code executes faster?
By setting up a local host XAMPP configuration, it has become apparent that the execution speed of features and functionality in the Drupal 7.x admin area is not dependent on constraints such as web host congestion, connection speeds and so on. With a local host, it becomes apparent that some aspects of Drupal 7.x admin includes big PHP scripts that involve long execution times.
I've already done things such as increasing execution memory to 128M and increasing the default script run time beyond the default 30seconds.
Beyond those basic steps, what additional adjustments to the PHP engine can be performed to get faster execution speed from it. This is for a local XAMPP installation, so I have total control over the PHP configuration.
What are possible PHP engine adjustments that can speed execution beyond those mentioned above?
Comments
opcode cache
Ensure that you have a PHP opcode cache installed and working. I like APC best, but there are a few other options as well such as XCache and eAccelerator. Check with phpinfo() to see if you have one already (search for those 3 names).
Also check on your MySQL settings and ensure that they are well matched with your local system's hardware resources. Look for a file called my.cnf for these settings.
APC
I have to second using opcode caching. I also like apc best. If you enable it and are ambitious, you can disable stat and once cached a file will remain cached until cleared (restart php). I find that apc is really only useful when using php-fpm and if you're using that then you may as well use nginx.
If you're curious about doing that, you could have a look at my site where I explain how to set up that whole stack.
In general, though, Drupal is pretty bloated. You'll run into a lot of slowness because of so much code. That's why there's so much optimization possible for anonymous users.
Thank you both for your valuable suggestions
Thank you both for your valuable suggestions.
spritefully yours
Technical assistance provided to the Drupal community on my own time ...
Thank yous appreciated ...
Wow
Hey Michael, amazing timing :) I was just reading the article on your site about Nginx and PHP-FPM mere minutes before you posted your reply :P I'm trying it out for the first time after many years of Apache, aiming for some extra performance for a rather large Drupal site I'm working on. Thanks for the great info!