I have a website using Drupal and a TNT theme. Since using this new and highly functional theme, page load times have deteriorated somewhat. Part of the problem might be the graphical "richness" of the theme, but I really doubt it's that much more heavy-weight than many other Drupal themes.
When I contacted my host provider, A2Hosting, they said that our site was running out of connections and suggested considering upgrading to a VPS or dedicated server.
Because of this advice, I'm not sure what the problem is. I noticed the performance problems mostly after upgrading the theme. However, A2Hosting is saying that I'm just exceeding my quotas.
My question is when should I be considering upgrading from a shared server to a VPS or dedicated server? We are currently serving to about 300 unique users a day, with users spending about 5 minutes on the site and visiting between 5-10 pages.
My suspicion is that the source of the problem is the theme or a module I have installed, but I want to first exclude the possibility that maybe we have to upgrade our tier of service?
Could anyone provide a rule of thumb as to how much traffic is necessary to get before you really need to think about VPS or dedicated hosting?
Thanks
Comments
Good question
But I bet that the number is over 300 per day.
You are on the right track being concerned with a theme or a hoggy module, but you may also need to consider a different, more drupal-friendly, shared host. I have found ANHosting to be a good place for minor sites, and have just had a real nice experience with rackspace cloud sites.
Of course, on a shared site, you are at the mercy of other users on the same server, but that is only an occasional annoyance.
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"He's said to be outspoken, but nobody's actually seen anyone do it"
It depends on the site
It depends on the site quality. As a rule 1000 users per day are enough to get vps hosting. I recommend joinvps. It has cheap vps plans.
High-level VPS hosting