32 replies to this topic

[ffMathy]

I have a solution to the Neowin speed problems that Neowin members are writing about here (http://www.neowin.ne...n-as-very-slow/). It's called Cloudflare (http://cloudflare.com) and is entirely free. I personally use it, and a lot of webhosting firms recently started using it globally for all of their customer's websites too.

It works by taking over your DNS (Domain Name System) servers, so that their servers handle the traffic instead. This is also called a CDN (Content Delivery Network), and it is what Google and Facebook are using too, in order to distribute network traffic over several servers. They have a server in almost every country, and by taking over your DNS, they automatically redirect the traffic to an appropriate server in the country that isn't overloaded too much. This would also make your website get less overload.

Furthermore, they compress your HTML. Right now, if you click "View source" on this page, the actual data is not compressed at all (sure, it might be GZip compressed without me knowing it due to under-the-hood browser features, but that doesn't give as much).

They also keep your site up. Let's say an error occurs on the website. They then just send the latest working version of Neowin to your users, while you fix the issue. Seen from a development perspective, changes added to the website are registered by Cloudflare in less than a few seconds. Furthermore, they keep your site protected to DDOSing, and other hacking attacks, as well as spammers. All of these functionalities can be toggled on or off if you don't trust them, too.

Now, with all the buzz going on lately about Google penalizing slow websites in the search results SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wise (http://googlewebmast...ch-ranking.html), I believe it would be a good idea to turn to this solution.

I'm not just an ordinary guy. I'm an experienced developer too, that recently ran a private hosting company through 3 years. If I didn't know much about Cloudflare, I wouldn't be recommending it.

[Simon-]

It works for static files, most of Neowin's content is dynamic. It's not going to make much difference.

[Guth]

Simon-, on 24 November 2012 - 10:13, said:

It works for static files, most of Neowin's content is dynamic. It's not going to make much difference.

This. with Neowin using AJAX and PHP pages I cant see it helping too much.
I've never used it though and I have heard good things about it.

I thought it wasn't free, especially for a website the size of neowin? I could be wrong though.

[LUTZIFER]

I still don't understand what is slow about Neowin. Seems to be quite a bit about that lately.
I'm on a fairly crappy internet service, and using wifi from a neibor somewhere nearby, and Neowin loads like in quarter of a second for me, on the main page and I don't find any post pages to load slow at all.

[cork1958]

Simon-, on 24 November 2012 - 10:13, said:

It works for static files, most of Neowin's content is dynamic. It's not going to make much difference.

No difference what so ever!

LUTZIFER, on 24 November 2012 - 10:48, said:

I still don't understand what is slow about Neowin. Seems to be quite a bit about that lately.
I'm on a fairly crappy internet service, and using wifi from a neibor somewhere nearby, and Neowin loads like in quarter of a second for me, on the main page and I don't find any post pages to load slow at all.

It's not the speed of simply loading Neowin, but usually when replying it can take MINUTES for post to go through. Board at times is almost useless!

[n_K]

Slowdown is most probably caused by a load of database transactions that are waiting to take place, cloudflare may speed up static files being sent but it slows down dynamic files even more because you're going through another data centre.
Fix neowin speed issues = fix database queries.

[Jason Stillion]

Didn't someone post recently about alexia and how slow the performance of neowin and the facebook stuff was the bottle neck.

[LUTZIFER]

Jason Stillion, on 24 November 2012 - 11:09, said:

Didn't someone post recently about alexia and how slow the performance of neowin and the facebook stuff was the bottle neck.

Yep, I read that. And I have noticed some changes on the main page with those Twitter and Facebook links near the top.

[Timan]

Jason Stillion, on 24 November 2012 - 11:09, said:

Didn't someone post recently about alexia and how slow the performance of neowin and the facebook stuff was the bottle neck.

Nah no one said that, theres two different issues. Site optimization which we did some of yesterday, then server optimization which is something that still needs to be addressed, but also IPB is gonna always run slower than the main page.

[HeyRatFans]

Not gonna tell you how to run your servers, but my suggestion would be to ditch Apache (presumably running PHP as a module?) and use nginx and PHP-FPM.

Both PHP 5.4.x and MySQL 5.5.x are substaintially better performance wise than their predecessors and Apache doesn't stand a chance against nginx.

Upgrading would also give you a chance to rid yourself of a LOT of software vulneravbilities that you might otherwise be at risk of by having not upgraded Apache and PHP.

[TSP]

HeyRatFans, on 24 November 2012 - 11:32, said:

Not gonna tell you how to run your servers, but my suggestion would be to ditch Apache (presumably running PHP as a module?) and use nginx and PHP-FPM.

We have a very good experience running nginx and PHP-FPM since we switched to it aswell, so I would recommend them considering it atleast.

[n_K]

HeyRatFans, on 24 November 2012 - 11:32, said:

Not gonna tell you how to run your servers, but my suggestion would be to ditch Apache (presumably running PHP as a module?) and use nginx and PHP-FPM.

Both PHP 5.4.x and MySQL 5.5.x are substaintially better performance wise than their predecessors and Apache doesn't stand a chance against nginx.

Upgrading would also give you a chance to rid yourself of a LOT of software vulneravbilities that you might otherwise be at risk of by having not upgraded Apache and PHP.

Agreed, but PHP is again rubbish, get HHVM and see performance run magically

[Redmak]

HeyRatFans, on 24 November 2012 - 11:32, said:

Not gonna tell you how to run your servers, but my suggestion would be to ditch Apache (presumably running PHP as a module?) and use nginx and PHP-FPM.

Both PHP 5.4.x and MySQL 5.5.x are substaintially better performance wise than their predecessors and Apache doesn't stand a chance against nginx.

Upgrading would also give you a chance to rid yourself of a LOT of software vulneravbilities that you might otherwise be at risk of by having not upgraded Apache and PHP.

Yeah, upgrading to PHP 5.4 is something we should do

[Guth]

I must say that neowin isnt all that slow for me on a 6mbit connection.
posting does take a little time (maybe 10s?)
but apart from that everything is no slower than any other forum i use. We must remember that IPB here is running aHUGE forum with a huge DB!

My suggestion would be vBulletin always been a fan of it. (Im kidding ofcourse, I realise that is not an option)

[pes2013]

HeyRatFans, on 24 November 2012 - 11:32, said:

Not gonna tell you how to run your servers, but my suggestion would be to ditch Apache (presumably running PHP as a module?) and use nginx and PHP-FPM.

Both PHP 5.4.x and MySQL 5.5.x are substaintially better performance wise than their predecessors and Apache doesn't stand a chance against nginx.

Upgrading would also give you a chance to rid yourself of a LOT of software vulneravbilities that you might otherwise be at risk of by having not upgraded Apache and PHP.

Im not sure if a Apache to nginx translation can be done overnight.......It might take some work.

I do agree that the latest version of PHP (and MySQL) should be used. Better yet, maybe MariaDB....