C5 Speed Test Please? (Also, a story of my woes with C5, GoDaddy, BlueHost & MediaTemple.)
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I've preached about Concrete5 as a CMS for years now, ever since they started. It's been a great alternative for my clients who don't want to learn how to add content through a back-end type editor, but would rather add content in more of a WYSIWYG manner. They rock at that.
However, as the newer releases come out, suddenly it's like speed was an after thought. Now they're telling us we should only use certain hosting providers to have a fast running C5 environment. Really?
**GoDaddy**
My client started on GoDaddy (their mistake, not mine) and of course had horrid results. Most of the time the server was just flat out down. I don't feel like I need to talk about them any more.
**MediaTemple (dv)**
I convinced them to let me handle the hosting on my MediaTemple (dv) server that I pay out the butt for. Still, 1-minute load times for the pages. Again, this is a dedicated environment with only 5 other sites hosted with them. Even though it didn't make sense, I gave up with those guys hosting a C5 site.
**BlueHost**
Desperate to get something viable, I decided to go with a C5 recommended host, BlueHost. Paid $90 up front for 6 months of hosting and they were down within 30 minutes of me setting up my account and after some research it turns out that's the norm recently. I thought, hey, let's call tech support and see what the deal is. I called 4 times and was immediately disconnected when I hit #2 for tech-support. Finally sales picked up as soon as I hit that option and long story short, full refund there.
**IX Web Hosting**
Then I remembered a client I had just built a C5 site for used IXWebHosting and his site was fast. They had a free 7 day trial and were only $5/mo after that. Everything seems to be loading within 2-3 seconds and I'm extremely happy with their tech-support thus far. I had friends and family check out the load times and they're seeing the same thing.
**TL;DR & The Favor I need**
The client is experiencing 6-13 second load times, I and every one else I've contacted so far are experiencing 2-3 second load times. Could you help me verify if this site is loading quickly?http://173.83.144.202/
Oh, and I'd recommendhttp://www.ixwebhosting.com/ for Concrete 5 sites. (that's not an affiliate link either, I just think they're great)
However, as the newer releases come out, suddenly it's like speed was an after thought. Now they're telling us we should only use certain hosting providers to have a fast running C5 environment. Really?
**GoDaddy**
My client started on GoDaddy (their mistake, not mine) and of course had horrid results. Most of the time the server was just flat out down. I don't feel like I need to talk about them any more.
**MediaTemple (dv)**
I convinced them to let me handle the hosting on my MediaTemple (dv) server that I pay out the butt for. Still, 1-minute load times for the pages. Again, this is a dedicated environment with only 5 other sites hosted with them. Even though it didn't make sense, I gave up with those guys hosting a C5 site.
**BlueHost**
Desperate to get something viable, I decided to go with a C5 recommended host, BlueHost. Paid $90 up front for 6 months of hosting and they were down within 30 minutes of me setting up my account and after some research it turns out that's the norm recently. I thought, hey, let's call tech support and see what the deal is. I called 4 times and was immediately disconnected when I hit #2 for tech-support. Finally sales picked up as soon as I hit that option and long story short, full refund there.
**IX Web Hosting**
Then I remembered a client I had just built a C5 site for used IXWebHosting and his site was fast. They had a free 7 day trial and were only $5/mo after that. Everything seems to be loading within 2-3 seconds and I'm extremely happy with their tech-support thus far. I had friends and family check out the load times and they're seeing the same thing.
**TL;DR & The Favor I need**
The client is experiencing 6-13 second load times, I and every one else I've contacted so far are experiencing 2-3 second load times. Could you help me verify if this site is loading quickly?http://173.83.144.202/
Oh, and I'd recommendhttp://www.ixwebhosting.com/ for Concrete 5 sites. (that's not an affiliate link either, I just think they're great)
"The client is experiencing 6-13 second load times..."
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I'm in UK - site loaded after about 10 seconds.
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I'm in UK - site loaded after about 10 seconds.
I have found it helpful to run a tracert from the client's office to see where the bottleneck is. Sometimes there's a bad router sitting between the client and the server that nobody else seems to be hitting.
This program is handy to see a trace over time. It needs to be run from the client's computer:
http://www.d3tr.de/download.html...
I have attached a graph from my location (east coast of Canada) to IP 173.83.144.202 and it is very fast. Every hop in my path is under 75ms.
This program is handy to see a trace over time. It needs to be run from the client's computer:
http://www.d3tr.de/download.html...
I have attached a graph from my location (east coast of Canada) to IP 173.83.144.202 and it is very fast. Every hop in my path is under 75ms.
There are too many hops required to your server, from the locations your clients experience slow load times. You can fix that by adding "Co-Location". This means that your clients will retrieve the website contents from the nearest location to them automatically, resulting in much faster load times.
I can recommend you rackspace.com (esp. rackspace cloud) for larger projects and digitalocean.com for small to medium projects. Sometimes it's not only about the price, but digitalocean is very cheap and really fast.
Here's a traceroute log:
traceroute to 173.83.144.202 (173.83.144.202), 20 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.169.22.239 (10.169.22.239) 0.092 ms 0.011 ms 0.010 ms
2 be17.433.core-b1.as6724.net (85.214.0.168) 0.182 ms 0.210 ms 0.197 ms
3 xe-0-0-0.core-b30.as6724.net (85.214.0.67) 0.616 ms 0.603 ms 0.590 ms
4 as6939.ber.ecix.net (194.9.117.51) 2.821 ms 3.003 ms 3.069 ms
5 10gigabitethernet5-1.core1.ams1.he.net (184.105.213.229) 20.647 ms 20.728 ms 20.703 ms
6 10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.lon1.he.net (72.52.92.81) 23.173 ms 33.569 ms 33.851 ms
7 10gigabitethernet10-4.core1.nyc4.he.net (72.52.92.241) 96.007 ms 101.878 ms 90.763 ms
8 10gigabitethernet4-1.core1.nyc5.he.net (184.105.213.218) 98.808 ms 98.975 ms 98.835 ms
9 ecommerce-inc.gigabitethernet2-16.core1.nyc5.he.net (216.66.3.86) 106.747 ms 106.600 ms 106.510 ms
10 oh-mls1-609.te-9-2.opentransfer.com (98.130.213.18) 113.196 ms 105.799 ms 104.826 ms
11 * * *
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Free advice on security: Your server is an easy hacking target, because it's running an outdated version of the Apache Webserver and an outdated version of PHP. I suppose the linux kernel used is outdated too. It's better to take control over that, by going to a dedicated or vServer.
I can recommend you rackspace.com (esp. rackspace cloud) for larger projects and digitalocean.com for small to medium projects. Sometimes it's not only about the price, but digitalocean is very cheap and really fast.
Here's a traceroute log:
traceroute to 173.83.144.202 (173.83.144.202), 20 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 10.169.22.239 (10.169.22.239) 0.092 ms 0.011 ms 0.010 ms
2 be17.433.core-b1.as6724.net (85.214.0.168) 0.182 ms 0.210 ms 0.197 ms
3 xe-0-0-0.core-b30.as6724.net (85.214.0.67) 0.616 ms 0.603 ms 0.590 ms
4 as6939.ber.ecix.net (194.9.117.51) 2.821 ms 3.003 ms 3.069 ms
5 10gigabitethernet5-1.core1.ams1.he.net (184.105.213.229) 20.647 ms 20.728 ms 20.703 ms
6 10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.lon1.he.net (72.52.92.81) 23.173 ms 33.569 ms 33.851 ms
7 10gigabitethernet10-4.core1.nyc4.he.net (72.52.92.241) 96.007 ms 101.878 ms 90.763 ms
8 10gigabitethernet4-1.core1.nyc5.he.net (184.105.213.218) 98.808 ms 98.975 ms 98.835 ms
9 ecommerce-inc.gigabitethernet2-16.core1.nyc5.he.net (216.66.3.86) 106.747 ms 106.600 ms 106.510 ms
10 oh-mls1-609.te-9-2.opentransfer.com (98.130.213.18) 113.196 ms 105.799 ms 104.826 ms
11 * * *
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13 * * *
14 * * *
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18 * * *
19 * * *
20 * * *
Free advice on security: Your server is an easy hacking target, because it's running an outdated version of the Apache Webserver and an outdated version of PHP. I suppose the linux kernel used is outdated too. It's better to take control over that, by going to a dedicated or vServer.
I really really and I do mean really like Site5 for concrete5 hosting. Check out Site5 athttp://www.site5.com/in.php?id=126019...
They have too many good things to list easily but one of my favorites is that you get to pick where your site is physically hosted. For me that was a data center in my same state of Washington. Ahh... those lovely low ping times. *swoon*
They have too many good things to list easily but one of my favorites is that you get to pick where your site is physically hosted. For me that was a data center in my same state of Washington. Ahh... those lovely low ping times. *swoon*
keep current backups with ix hosting I have 1 client on IX and after about a year - 3 separate times they updated something in there servers and it deleted php files like index.php
I am moving away from IX soon. Experiencing very slow speed and slow ftp upload
"However, as the newer releases come out, suddenly it's like speed was an after thought. Now they're telling us we should only use certain hosting providers to have a fast running C5 environment. Really?"
This is an interesting observation to me. I am in the process of spending a bunch of money and a lot of time to update my rather large C5 5.4.2 site to current C5 5.6.x with understanding that many tweaks to the core have been made that will improve performance and reduce server demands. My site runs pretty fast as it ishttp://www.netknots.com Maybe the old axiom "If it ain't broke don't fix it" should be heeded and I should just leave it as is? My host is inMotion Hosting.com and all in all has been pretty good for 2+ years now on a mid level VPS.
This is an interesting observation to me. I am in the process of spending a bunch of money and a lot of time to update my rather large C5 5.4.2 site to current C5 5.6.x with understanding that many tweaks to the core have been made that will improve performance and reduce server demands. My site runs pretty fast as it ishttp://www.netknots.com Maybe the old axiom "If it ain't broke don't fix it" should be heeded and I should just leave it as is? My host is inMotion Hosting.com and all in all has been pretty good for 2+ years now on a mid level VPS.
Hello,
One of my client's website is hosted on an inmotion vps plan and we were pretty happy for around a year when without an explanation the server started crashing. Literally crashing, website unavailable and all.
I discovered there was a php error thrown every time that was due to a faulty permission on a dashboard page (that is documented somewhere here).
I updated to 5.6.2.1 from 5.5.something to benefit from the new improved caching engine and fixed the permission problem. So far it has been pretty good, no more crashing.
So how does that relate to your comment?
First I am a bit upset at inmotion because a server shouldn't crash for so little when shared hosts were handling it easily. nd I can't say I was thrilled with their help. They were responsive but obviously I was dealing with people who didn't have a clue and were giving me scripted answer until I got angry. Then it moved forward. A bit...
Second, the problem that was causing this had been fixed in the newer version so updating should have been done earlier.
Now in your case specifically, you are using the ecommerce add-on I think. If you ever want to upgrade to their latest version for whatever reason (new options, better management of larger catalog...) you can't if you are still on an oldish C5.
And that's true with everything else. With old C5, progressively you won't be able to update whatever add-ons you use, you won't benefit from improvements, and eventually you won't even be able to benefit from support.
What's more, one day, maybe soon you might have no choice but to update php on your server to 5.4 or 5.5 or above and your website will most likely stop working.
I totally agree that updating from 5.4 to 5.6 is not that trivial and many things can go wrong but it's definitely more than worth it.
Oh you will have a little learning to do to get used to the new dashboard but not much.
One of my client's website is hosted on an inmotion vps plan and we were pretty happy for around a year when without an explanation the server started crashing. Literally crashing, website unavailable and all.
I discovered there was a php error thrown every time that was due to a faulty permission on a dashboard page (that is documented somewhere here).
I updated to 5.6.2.1 from 5.5.something to benefit from the new improved caching engine and fixed the permission problem. So far it has been pretty good, no more crashing.
So how does that relate to your comment?
First I am a bit upset at inmotion because a server shouldn't crash for so little when shared hosts were handling it easily. nd I can't say I was thrilled with their help. They were responsive but obviously I was dealing with people who didn't have a clue and were giving me scripted answer until I got angry. Then it moved forward. A bit...
Second, the problem that was causing this had been fixed in the newer version so updating should have been done earlier.
Now in your case specifically, you are using the ecommerce add-on I think. If you ever want to upgrade to their latest version for whatever reason (new options, better management of larger catalog...) you can't if you are still on an oldish C5.
And that's true with everything else. With old C5, progressively you won't be able to update whatever add-ons you use, you won't benefit from improvements, and eventually you won't even be able to benefit from support.
What's more, one day, maybe soon you might have no choice but to update php on your server to 5.4 or 5.5 or above and your website will most likely stop working.
I totally agree that updating from 5.4 to 5.6 is not that trivial and many things can go wrong but it's definitely more than worth it.
Oh you will have a little learning to do to get used to the new dashboard but not much.
If your site was static, no new content or functionality, and its working ok, then maybe leave it well alone. As long as you can depend on your host to never update your server environment (new php version, new apache version, new mySQL version), then stable is alluring.
However, I recall your (@slojes) job post with what looked like a lot of new content with some new functionality. Now the equation changes and if it were my site I would be upgrading to the latest 5.6.+ version as part of that redevelopment for all the reasons @mnakalay gives.
With a big upgrade, I always play it cautiously, testing everything through a clone on my development system and then a staging site, with backups at every stage of the process. On a site as large as yours there are bound to be things that don't upgrade perfectly first time, but in the long run it will be worthwhile.
However, I recall your (@slojes) job post with what looked like a lot of new content with some new functionality. Now the equation changes and if it were my site I would be upgrading to the latest 5.6.+ version as part of that redevelopment for all the reasons @mnakalay gives.
With a big upgrade, I always play it cautiously, testing everything through a clone on my development system and then a staging site, with backups at every stage of the process. On a site as large as yours there are bound to be things that don't upgrade perfectly first time, but in the long run it will be worthwhile.
I'm in China so behind a nation wide firewall, on a slow 2m adsl, I checked your website on a Chinese brand android tablet and it loaded really fast. Way faster than many websites I visit.
I have to say also that I have a website on bluehost and I didn't experience any problem. They get a bit slow at time but that's all.