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By realOFF on
Hello everyone! I'm having this interesting scenario I would like to share and see if you can cast some light on this since I have no idea about the source of the problem and haven't found much support with the hosting provider.
Setting.
I have my main site (offgames.org) hosted at Hosting24. Everything runs fine, most of the time.
In order to test new functionalities I decided to create a test site. So I duplicated the database and files and set a new site under offgames.org/TEST (which can also be accessed trough test.offgames.org).
Problem.
The problem is that since the first day this test site is extremely slow or unresponsive. There are times when I only get a blank page. Furthermore, when this problems arise in the test site, taxonomy and blocks start disappearing at the main site!
The most annoying, strange and interesting thing here is the taxonomy and block disappearing for the main site which make it unusable. I don't understand the relationship because both sites (main and test) use databases with different names (although they have the same content). Hosting provider blames "the script" for this problems... I can only think on some sort of limitation in the server, but hosting provider support seems reluctant to go beyond the script theory.
How to.
To accomplish the creation of the test site I followed this steps:
- Created a TEST folder.
- Downloaded latest version of Drupal (6.14) and made a clean install.
- Copied sites folder from main site into TEST folder with the exception of settings.php and default.settings.php.
- Created a xxx_test database
- Completed the Drupal Install process without problems pointing to the new database.
- Enabled the Backup and Migrate module (which is also installed in the main site).
- Used Backup and Migrate to restore the last backup from main site
Everything worked fine, but notably slower.
I would be really grateful if you could share some thoughts with me since I'm really lost and this problem is affecting greatly my main production site. Thanks in advance!
Comments
bump!
bump!
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Maybe because of the holiday season? Also see http://drupal.org/forum-posting#volunteers.
In any case, there should be no relationship between the sites-- did you also update the settings.php file of the test site to refer to the new db? also, clear the cache.
> I would be really grateful
> I would be really grateful if you could share some thoughts with me
To create a test site I'd:
· create a subdomain
· copy the entire live site into the subdomain (chmod /default and settings.php to 755 first)
· copy the database
· edit the test's settings.php to reflect the new baseURL and database (IMPORTANT!! otherwise the test site will use your live DB)
Your way, you'd never know if the second installation procedure did something slightly different from the first.
But this method ensures that the test is an *exact* copy of the live site.
As to your problem, if it is shared hosting, and/or you have less than 96mb, then that would probably account for it.
I stopped trying to get ONE drupal site to run on shared hosting months ago - it just doesn't work. Two would be impossible.
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Please be careful sweeping statements like this-- it all depends on the host and the individual sites. I have about a dozen sites all running off the same shared account, with no problems. They have minimal traffic and most are dev, but its certainly not impossible. For a production site with more than minimal traffic, then yes, shared hosting is inappropriate.
It was a figure of speech,
It was a figure of speech, and it wasn't sweeping - it pertained to my experience on my host(s) and my site.
Now I remember why I stopped bothering to post here - the insidious, ever-present drupal defensiveness!
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"it just doesn't work" and "impossible" are not figures of speech and debunking blatantly false information is not defensiveness. Anyone else reading this would see those words and think you are saying running drupal is not possible on shared hosts which is simply untrue.
You frequently post your opinion as fact and then get attitude when corrected-- if you don't like being corrected then don't post your opinions as fact. But I will continue to point out FUD, which is a disservice to everyone-- especially newbies, whenever I see it.
'Impossible' was obviously
'Impossible' was obviously hyperbole, which is a figure of speech.
'it just doesn't work' is clearly linked to the clause before the hyphen, and that clause is clearly describing a personal experience I had.
Just to clarify for you, I tried three business-level shared hosts before opting for a VPS. The site in question necessarily had 30 modules installed, and up to a dozen simultaneous users. It would not run on a shared host - 96mb of php memory wasn't enough, and the sql servers kept timing-out too. The hosts typically had 100-140 other websites on their servers.
I could understand your reaction if I'd said 'you'll never get drupal to work on any shared host because it is a resource hog', but if you step back a bit from being such a drupal fangirl, you'll see that you're reading things into my post that I never said.
Tell you what I'll do - I'll avoid writing in threads that you contribute to, and I've created an appropriate sig, warning people about the lack of quality in my replies. I'd change my tone and writing style for you if I could, but I can't, especially if I'm frustrated and angry with this silly website stuff.
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geez... talk about overreaction.
I've long since stopped wondering or caring why you continue to use drupal since you obvious hate it, and post in these forums you also seem to hate so much.
I'll tell you what-- from now on I'll avoid wasting my precious free time, including setting up dev sites just to try and work out the code you need, helping you when you ask for it these horrible forums. good luck.
> geez... talk about
> geez... talk about overreaction.
Not really. This isn't the first time this has happened, is it? I stopped frequenting the forums as much as I used to because of exactly this kind conflict.
> I've long since stopped wondering or caring why you continue to use drupal since you obvious hate it
Let me enlighten you. 90% of people who use Windows think it's crap and would prefer an alternative, but are tied into it for a multitude of different reasons, not least lack of a viable alternative. Drupal is no different. Drupal is a worse CMS than joomla or wordpress, it just happens to have marginally more flexibility, but this comes at the price of being infinitely more frustrating, harder work, and takes much longer to set-up. I don't have any loyalty to drupal whatsoever, and will drop it like a stone when anything slightly better appears.
> and post in these forums you also seem to hate so much.
As I understand it, which is reiterated in your own sig, is that if a question is asked, it is nice to stick around and answer a few if you can, while you wait for a reply to your own. That's all I'm doing. Nothing altruistic about it. And it's not the forums I hate, it's the staggering silliness and sloppiness of some aspects of drupal.
Since I'm not an expert, I write purely from my own very limited experience. If I advise someone with less experience than myself to be very careful before considering trying a multilingual site, for example, because the implementation of it is buggy and inconsistent, that this is a valid opinion borne from my experience and may save someone with the same skill level as myself dozens of frustrated, wasted hours. It is extremely annoying to have experts invalidating these opinions as if my experience never happened and then to also see the expert encourage someone down a path I *know* from experience is much harder than they make it appear.
In this case, my experience is that drupal will not run well on shared hosts, and the OP's problem may well lie there rather than an error made in setting up the test site. I wasted dozens of hours trying shared hosting, and the problems only dispersed when I moved from the 80$ per year hosts to a 200$ VPS. Why chastise me, and claim that I shouldn't say that? Firstly you haven't offered an alternative, more likely explanation to the OP's problem, and secondly you know fine well that the forum is peppered with people posting a similar experience!
I'm guessing that you'd advise the OP to try a different shared host, because drupal is lightweight enough? I TOOK that kind of advice many months ago. After the first shared host failed, I tried two more business accounts on other shared hosts thanks to advice like yours. It cost me money and weeks of pissing about, with the constant worry that the site would go down, and that my boss and colleagues could lose their email at any moment, in addition to the sheer stress when the site did fail, spending lunch breaks, evenings and weekends trying to get it back online, finding new hosts and cancelling/transferring accounts.
> from now on I'll avoid wasting my precious free time
Your decision. Thanks for your help in the past. I rarely visit now anyway, because of exactly this kind of elitist, chastising attitude from the regulars that this forum is really quite infamous for.
The uncommenting RewriteBase
Try uncommenting RewriteBase in your .htaccess file for your test site. I run multiple instances of Drupal on the same server (GoDaddy) set up very much like you're doing (subdomain referencing a subfolder), and I have to do this.
# If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/,
# uncomment the following line:
RewriteBase /
Thank you very much for your
Thank you very much for your comments.
I'll stick to the lack of memory or some other sort of limitation on the server side. I'm using a shared hosting.
Curiously, test site has improved performance since I created this topic.
I wasn't a cache issue cause I clean it all the time.
Maybe the hosting provider assigned more memory (or what ever was necessary) to my account.
Thanks again. Really appreciate it. =)