Very slow drupal | drupal.org

Posted by matthew_ellis24 on July 21, 2008 at 5:48pm

Hi my drupal site is very slow. I've seen a few other posts on this that suggest installing php and mysql caching, but I don't see how to do that.

I've installed the firefox and drupal devel modules, and I have caching and css aggregation enabled.

My pages can take up to 16secs to load, for example the modules page stats are below:

"1216661957235","http://www.phanaeinionline.co.uk/admin/build/modules","12726","16564","186932","2"

"1216661969898","RESP-START","http://www.phanaeinionline.co.uk/admin/build/modules","200","null"
"1216661972969","RESP-START","http://www.phanaeinionline.co.uk/sites/all/themes/salamander/css/salamander2.css","404","null"

I'm not sure what output is useful from the devel module so won't post yet. Let me know what is most informative.

I would really appreciate some help in speeding up the site as it can be painfully slow, and there aren't even really that many modules

Comments

One thing I found that

Posted by davedelong on July 21, 2008 at 5:52pm

One thing I found that really slowed my site down was that the MySQL databases were on a remote server. Are your databases remote or local?

erm, no idea! They're

Posted by matthew_ellis24 on July 21, 2008 at 5:59pm

erm, no idea! They're wherever Godaddy put them. Is there some way to find out/alter where it is?

According to this page, it

Posted by davedelong on July 21, 2008 at 6:11pm

According to this page, it looks like they're on a remote server.

In your site's settings.php file, you'll see a url that starts with mysql://. The bit after the @ and before the / is the database server. If it says "localhost", it's on the same machine. If it says anything else, then it's remote.

I don't think there's a way to change where the databases are stored.

davedelong: ok, well it's

Posted by matthew_ellis24 on July 21, 2008 at 8:15pm

davedelong:
ok, well it's not localhost. I'd seen a few articles on how bad for performance it can be if the database is on a remote server, now I guess I'm experiencing it first hand. Can anything be done?

Varying speeds

Posted by yelvington on July 21, 2008 at 6:26pm

I took a look at your site and found very slow performance for the first few clicks, then it was fast as lightning. This suggests a shared-server performance issue unrelated to Drupal.

Are you planning for a heavy load of dung beetle fans? :-)

Thanks for looking. There's

Posted by matthew_ellis24 on July 21, 2008 at 8:12pm

Thanks for looking. There's not much there at the minute other than the main guts of the site. Now to add all the bells and whistles.

Anyway, back to the point in hand. Based on traffic from the old site we get about 50 unique visits a day averaging about 2-30mins on site depending on whether they're looking at species or posting in the forums/reading articles.

Because people use the site for IDing specimens then they often open up many links at once to compare so it would be quite handy if it could be sped up.

I know people have recommended sql and php caching, but there doesn't seem to be any idiots guide to installing them!

=-=

Posted by VM on July 21, 2008 at 8:16pm

I've found that php and mysql caching isn't usually available on shared servers nor do they allow you to install.

The only thing I can suggest is to find a host that allows you to use localhost for the DB. beyond that you're in the realm of looking for a VPS where you have control and I'm not betting you are wanting to spend that kind of cash.

you bet correctly - at least

Posted by matthew_ellis24 on July 21, 2008 at 8:22pm

you bet correctly - at least until I convince people it's a good way to spend the grant :)