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Looking to hire Drupal developer for load time debugging
I'm looking to hire a new Drupal developer for load time debugging on my site. Please see this thread for a description of the problem and fixes I've unsuccessfully attempted thus far.
I'm looking for:
Brief description of the problem:
The main page of the live HollywoodChicago.com and other pages (such as the admin pages) load fine. Content or node pages (i.e. pages for a news story, film review, discussion forum, etc.) have a 10-second or so delay to load. I can't figure out why.
What's even more confusing is that the development HollywoodChicago.com site on the same server doesn't have the same problem and loads just fine. Yes, there is much more data on the live site and database than the dev site and database, but I still can't figure out the culprit.
The site is being hosted on shared GoDaddy hosting. I know this is a problem and I am willing to upgrade to an afforable and better hosting plan at a better hosting company. I'm likely shooting for a VPS. Suggestions for top-quality hosting providers are welcome for my situation and budget.
I view this to be a two-step project that I'd like to take place over the next one to two months:
1) Debug the site for load times and other code/database inefficiencies to dramatically improve load times. This may or may not require the hosting switch to get the desired effect.
2) Migrate to a better Web host.
The debugging may solve the problem or may not. The hosting switch may solve the problem or may not. But both are necessary. I'm looking for one person to help me with both. Please e-mail me to discuss your experience, hourly rate, time estimate based on having read my thread to date and availability. Thank you.
~ Adam Fendelman
Edited by: VeryMisunderstood; Moved to Paid Services Forum
Upgrading to Drupal 6.x
It might not be a bad idea to discuss upgrading to Drupal 6.x in this process, too.
Try using the Firefox
Try using the Firefox extension firebug and the net tab. The main page can load pretty slowly and a good chunk of that time was getting something from whos.amung.us and other external sources. You seem to be pulling a fair amount from other sites including javascript and that will make it hard to control your own page load times.
Yeah...
Yeah. As mentioned throughout this thread, I have used Firebug in my own debugging attempts.
I know third-party code (i.e. from FeedBurner, whos.amung.us, etc.) could be causing load time issues, but it seems to me that only sometimes happens in loading AFTER a page loads. What I'm most concerned about is the INITIAL "thinking" (10 seconds or so) for an internal content/node page to load before anything else does.
That's what's most concerning right now, and from my own debugging attempts, I haven't been able to figure out why it's happening. That's why now I'm moving to the point of upgrading hosting to a VPS and hiring a Drupal debugger. In terms of VPS hosting, I'm currently considering eApps.com, LiquidWeb.com and LunarPages.com.
can you give a link of a page that loads slow?
someone might be able to find it pretty quickly, depending on what it is it might be easy to find. give a few links.
Here you go...
The pages that load slow on the live site are all "internal" content/node pages (i.e. a film review, film news article, discussion forum, etc.). These pages have an extra 10-second or so "thinking" load time that I can't figure out. The main page, admin pages, etc. don't. Here are a few such links that do and don't load slowly:
These pages DO load slow:
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/5940/interview-oscar-winner-timothy...
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/forums/5942/hollywoodchicagocom-intervie...
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/news/5617/tv-review-24-searches-for-rede...
These pages DO NOT load slow:
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/tracker
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/archive
* http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/tv
I notice that whos.amung.us
I notice that whos.amung.us can load in 150 to 300 ms for your faster pages but takes longer on the slow pages (for example almost 9s)
Yeah, but
Yeah, but I really do use that third-party feature. I know it sometimes takes a while to load, but that's only after the page has already loaded. It's not slowing down the initial page load, which is what I really care about now.
you've got a pretty big page hit
The page is pretty bad including a lot of big images, but your site's execution is slow even for that. It appears the actual execution of page is pretty slow before the html page is even delivered. Do you have caching turned on? I would turn on every caching option, the CSS/js will really help.
Often times script references in the head or earlier in the html page will slow execution of the page bc the browser will wait for the script reference to execute before it continues loading the page. That means that even one script could make the page hang. If you are integration some external scripts like ads/analytics references/rss/etc if you can move those to right below the closing body tag that will help.
I tried turned off javascript and images and the page is still really slow so your bottleneck is most likely server-side. Again caching will help with that. Also I wonder if there is a profiling module for drupal? You might have a module that's executing that's really inefficient or making a big database query. I'm thinking your problem lies there.
Response...
It's an arts and entertainment site, so we'll always have lots of images and lots of large ones. They're not too large in actual file size, though, and with broadband these days, I'm not too concerned about that.
What I'm most concerned about is why it's "thinking" for 10 or so seconds before loading an internal content/node page. Yes, after I've said in the other thread about this problem, I have all caching turned on ("normal" caching mode and I've enabled CSS aggregation and compression).
I just moved the Google Analytics code to the bottom along with another piece of code right before the tag, which was required for that tag. Still no improvement, though. Something else is still the culprit of the 10-seonc "thinking" before the internal pages even load.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "profiling module". It certainly could be a module that's slowing things down, but I would have no way to know which. I have lots of modules installed. My dev site is running fast and isn't having this slowdown and it doesn't have many modules that I later added to the live site, which does have the slowdown on internal pages.
I'm not sure what you mean
check out http://drupal.org/project/devel and http://drupal.org/project/performance.
Just installed the devel module
Just installed the devel module. It's giving me a ton of information, but I don't know what to do with it.
It seems like there are a lot of entries for buddylist_get_buddy_groups taking up lots of load time along with links_load_links_for_node, but what should I be looking for here?
There's something that's causing an internal/node page to "think" for 10 to 15 seconds before even loading. That's not the case on the main page of the live site, the admin pages on the live site and all pages on the dev site.
do you know what modules those use?
an easy way of troubleshooting is just deactivating/activating modules and see which ones affect performance - you of course would want to do this on a test box or dev server, not production. that's your best bet. once you've found the module(s) that are causing the problems you're alot closer to finding your solution
Yeah.
Yeah. Sounds like one way of fixing this is looking at all the modules installed on the live site that aren't on the dev site (which is working fine in terms of performance and doesn't have that problem) and disabling them until I hopefully find a load time culprit, right?
But if it's a hosting or database problem, even doing that wouldn't find the answer. It's like searching for a needle in a haystack. I wish I could understand that devel module information. An answer might be there. I just don't know how to interpret it.
i dont think its a hosting problem
it could be a big database hit but you would be able to narrow down the problem by finding the naughty module that's causing the issue. let us know what you find.
All FIXED! GoDaddy shared hosting was largely the problem
All fixed! We just launched HollywoodChicago.com today on GoDaddy virtual dedicated hosting (instead of GoDaddy shared hosting). The new hosting comes to around $45 per month. I doubled the RAM to 512 MB and 2 GB bursted, but kept the bandwidth (500 GB a month) and disk space (10 GB) the same. I'm running on CentOS 5. I also added 10 GB of FTP backup for $3 a month.
The site is now BLAZING and appears stable. This switch got rid of the mysterious 10- to 15-second load time problem on internal pages. The Drupal developer I hired also installed the Drupal boost module (to further improve caching) and the Drupal db_maintenance module (to optimize my databases).
Yay! Thanks everyone for all your help!
Publisher, HollywoodChicago.com
excellent!
let's see that will be $100/hr...i'll send you a bill - should i send it to hollywood? j/k