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Posted on Jan 13, 2005 - 11:20 PM by zmcnulty
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We know the site takes a crapload of time to respond, and we're working on it. As the poll indicates, many TechJapan visitors are forced to wait over 7 seconds before they can access the site. This is terrible, and I assure you it will be fixed in the near future.
What we do know is that the slowdown of the site is related to the database. Running a request for a normal HTML page at our domain works perfectly well -- it's only the dynamic content (meaning, the entirety of TechJapan) that suffers from slowdowns, as it needs to pull information from the mySQL database.
While TechJapan and any other PostNuke site does employ heavy usage of a mySQL database, I'd like to point out that things really shouldn't be as bad as they are. You probably remember when we were at Globat (pre-December 2004); the Globat database was nearly 8MB in size, and ran under PostNuke .726. The DreamHost database (via our current host) is about 5.25MB in size and runs under PostNuke .750, allegedly far more optimized at database queries. In other words, it's not my fault.
Still, thanks for sticking with us. The slow domain doesn't affect the functionality of the site (unless it gets really slow); it only means you need to wait a tad longer when you come to visit.
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| Comments (must be registered to post) | |
| Anonymous
14.01.05, 03:03 |
Try using something else other than postNuke - perhaps something that will render pages statically for you rather than being DB-driven To be honest, I'm surprised a site of this site is running off PostNuke - it simply isn't scalable and there comes a point when you need to make the painful break away from it to something more suitable for a site of this size/traffic. Ben |
| zmcnulty
14.01.05, 07:29 |
Ben, Thanks for the comments. PostNuke is this site's best friend and worst enemy. I think it's clear why we like to use PostNuke (permissions system, module development community, ease of customization), but we've often considered using other things. That being said, we're easily put off by a few points. Namely, conversion of articles to the new system. In comparison to other PostNuke sites, except for perhaps postnuke.com itself, TechJapan has a crapload of articles. We're over 800 now. Obviously the "meat" of our database, it would be an almost impossible task to have to manually convert all these stories. If it were as simple as renaming a database table or throwing them through some sort of batch converter, it might be an option; but as it stands, there's simply not enough of a reason to switch to anything else right now. I've looked at other so-called "CMS" software, but many of them appear to be just blog softwares with no more than a few added features. Do you have any recommendations? As far as scalability of PostNuke is concerned, take a look at: http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Stats&file=index Though obviously a running from a dedicated server, the site has over 200,000 users, and gets more than 500,000 hits per day. Besides, as I mentioned in the post, the less optimized Globat database ran faster than the optimized DreamHost database. There's not much of a reason a .750 PostNuke install would run slower than a .726 PostNuke install, providing the database of the former is even smaller than the latter. In fact, the only reason I can think of is because of some sort of hardware problem on our host's end. I've put in a support ticket at DreamHost; we'll see what they have to say. |
| zmcnulty
16.01.05, 19:58 |
DreamHost's database person is supposed to get back to me on Monday. Oh boy. |
| zmcnulty
16.01.05, 23:09 |
Things seem to be much faster after I've disabled the "TechJapan Community" block. THE PLOT THICKENS |
| Anonymous
17.01.05, 02:35 |
From my experience, converting articles from one db format to another isn't acutally that difficult. It simply requires you to work out the db-structure in the new system and then do some SQL to convert it - seeing as it's something you only have to do one, you can even off-load this to a SQL programmer for a couple of hours consultancy (you can probably find someone cheaper than you think - and a lot less than what it's "costing" you to continue with postnuke). There are many open source content management systems around, I don't know your full requirements so I can't make any reccomendations at this time. Ben |
| zmcnulty
17.01.05, 07:35 |
We'll see how it pans out; I think trying to switch to a different CMS would cause more problems than it solves. |
