Speeding Up Drupal Site: How? (besides the core options under "performance" tab)
Rosamunda - March 3, 2009 - 17:13
I´ve been a Drupal User from some time now, and I want to make some serios changes in my 5.x site when I convert it to 6.x.
I want to install modules that I know are resource-consuming (like Organic Groups and Faceted Search), and I don´t want my site to slow down.
Besides the default configuration of cache and stuff under "performance", what are the chances to improve the performance?
I´ve been reading some stuff in the forums, and just got more confused...
Thanks for your thoughts and opinions!!
Rosamunda
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I found some great info over at 2bits: http://2bits.com/articles/drupal-performance-tuning-and-optimization-for...
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I moved from shared hosting
I moved from shared hosting to a VPS. With 600 megs of (a total of 2 gigs) php memory committed to a single drupal site, mere words are insufficient to describe the performance boost.
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Summary
Thanks both of you guys!
Thank you very much for the link, it´s amazing all the info that´s out there!
If I´m not much mistaken, I can safely conclude that:
Memcache?
They have some personal tips, like:
We use memcache without the database caching
More importantly, the site has only 46 modules, as opposed to the 80-120 we find on sites these days.
Drupal cache modules?
They recommend block cache module, boost and fastpath fscache.
Move PHP code out of blocks, views and nodes
"Code stored in the database is first fetched from the database, then executed by PHP. Because of that, this code is never cached by accelerators/op-code caches, and can be slower to execute than cached code." [*]
Node_access table has a negative impact some times
Solution: Bybass the node_access table.
Shared Hosting, VPS and Dedicated Servers
They agree: VPS or Dedicated Servers are much, much better than Shared Hosting.
They say a few interesting things here:
1. Install as much memory as you can afford
2. Avoid dedicated with shared database hosts (aka. Don´t use Dreamhost)
3. Use a PHP Accelerator/op-code cache (This seems to be a must for medium to large web site. The popular free ones are APC, eAcceleartor and Xcache).
4. Less is More! Avoid using many modules, and check for scalability. ("...full featured sites seem to have about 80 to 110 modules. I have seen a case where a site had 122 module. Keeping the number of modules down can help a lot...").
Drupal 5 is faster than Drupal 6 [Is this true!?]
Oh my! I really hope they are wrong.
But then again, they´ve tested with page cache on. This freaked me out!
I must say that 2bits certainly have some very interesting information about performance concerns...
Rosamunda
Rosamunda
Buenos Aires | Argentina
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imo the 2 most important things you can do, and the low hanging fruit, are adding an opcode cache (apc, eaccelerator, xcache) and moving code out of the db.
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.