What can I do to increase loading time?
 

Ok, my site design for www.povauditions.com loads a little slow....trying to figure out what i can do server wise to make it load faster. I already upgraded the RAM to 2 gb, what else could it be? CPU? Drive System? Please help....thanks!

You probably want to DECREASE load time, then.

If you're using PHP, do not use <? include("http://" ... ?> to include files, either use SHTML's include virtual, or <?php include("..file") ?>, or <?php readfile("..file".. ?> if you don't need to execute PHP in your scripts.

Always lower the quality of images just a bit.. and 2GB isn't shit for RAM.

You have probably 300 pictures on tour.html. You can make slightly larger/less pictures, and this will decrease the load on your webserver, but the more you add, the slower it's going to be wether a prefork or a newer model of webserver.

Enable keepalives in your webserver, they're disabled. Since you have so many images on the tour page, that will help out if you have to have the design like that. Reducing the image count would help either way.

That's a good call, but he only has 2GB of RAM, now. It was probably turned off so he didn't swap to death. I'd say to keep them off, for now, and get MORE RAM/more processes, or a non-forking webserver to handle the static content.

it loaded fast here

Eh, I can't imagine the server has that much traffic if he's just running into this now.

Even a preforking server with 2G can handle a lot of connections if it's tuned and managed properly.

In any case, the OP should talk to his host about it, they'd be better able to judge what the server can do and offer suggestions for making it better. If he's unmanaged, he should not be if he's having to ask this question.

I assume he went to the 2G of RAM because it was so damn slow. Preforking with 2G can manage a shitload of connections, however, with ~300 on his tour page, my guess is that he's still only at ~512 to 1024 connections in his config, and he's got PHP loaded (if not mod_perl, et al) into every child process.

I agree 100% on the later statement. :thumbsup

Well, maybe it isn't shit...but it was 512 mb, upgraded to 2 gb and didn't do a thing. What's a pre - forking server? I'll ask if enabling keep alives will help. My host is native hosting, www.nativehosting.com, so not sure if you're familiar with them. Anyway, i'll ask some of these questions to them. Any more suggestions please let me know. Oh, and i'm a she....lol......Tia

pre-forking just has to do with the type of webserver you're running.

Personally, I'd just try enabling keepalives, and see if that either helps, or causes your server to crash :)

I think it will give you the results you're looking for, but as Grouchy says, if there's lots of traffic it can cause problems. Lots of traffic meaning hundreds of requests per second.

If you had 512M before, and your server wasn't dead, then enabling keepalives shouldn't cause any problems.

I haven't heard of nativehosting, but if they can't solve this for you, you should definitely look at alternatives.

If it was 512MB before, you're probably on a bargain-basement server.

I bet you're also I/O bound from all of those pictures. Getting an SAS drive should assist, but it's basically a meatball-surgeon tactic to patch it from being a shitty machine to a slightly-less shitty machine.