T Boatright, Riding Double, USA
Thank you so much Esvon! We purchased your package and wanted very specific
changes made to meet our "dating site" needs. With basic HTML knowledge i was able
to give the site the "look" we wanted. The rest i relied on you, and you were
always quick to respond to my needs, did great work and of course the price
was fantastic. Thanks for helping us get started!
C Pigg, Imagine Designs, USA
I would like to thank Esvon Software for the great classifieds software and the great support and
customization. They know what they're doing, and they do everything the way YOU want it. I really couldn't be any happier, and
I know for a fact, that if I would of went with someone else for my software, I wouldn't of been satisfied as I am now.
How can I make my application (website) run faster as a whole ?
Although your hosting provider may offer you to upgrade hosting package or replace server parts,
the latest hardware is often not the solution to website performance problems.
We can help you to find answer(s) to this question.
As a quick proof of our skills you can download demo version
of Esvon Classifieds with many modules. Have a quick look and let us know if you will find
anything worth a critical remark.
We carefully designed Esvon Classifieds and used the best
known to us programming methodologies to make it solid
and very fast application.
It was noticed that after medium or extensive functionality customization
probably by junior developers (php/mysql custom programming) the website can run
slower bringing server to knees and eating up to 100% of CPU time or RAM.
In most cases the conclusion was simple: always hire experienced professionals
for custom programming services if you have real plans for your website.
Such developers will take into account many different coding aspects including
general website performance and database architecture.
If you have similar issues, you'll have to address them sooner or later.
First question before doing anything, is this server dedicated to your website
or other websites are hosted as well and they could cause server performance problems ?
If you are sure that your website causes this,
PHP code audit and MySQL database structure / SQL queries optimization can help.
As it was mentioned, certain custom programming changes could affect overall performance and
slow down website when traffic increases occur.
How can we help ?
We can perform performance audit to find possible bottlenecks (tune the slowest SQL queries,
eliminate unnecessary SQL queries, create missing or remove redundant table indexes,
optimize CPU intensive PHP code, etc)
and make the necessary database structure / PHP code changes to ensure the software works as fast as possible.
We should be able to find out the changes required to speed up the website as a whole and give you
a quote on these changes before doing them.
If you are interested in our services, please submit your request using Online HelpDesk
here.
If you have made efforts to boost the performance by optimizing your queries and your application code,
there are number of server-level and language-level tunings for high-traffic websites
(OS, MySQL, hardware related) that you (or your host admin)
can try to ensure that an application performs at its best, i.e. :
1/ Use the latest stable MySQL version. There are enough things that run faster on MySQL 4.x and later versions
(improved SQL query optimizer behaviour, query cache if enabled, SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS option, full-text indexing, more efficient SQL syntax in some cases, etc), our software automatically uses some of them if they are available.
2/ Install Compiler Cache (eAccelerator, Zend Accelerator).
This step will reduce server load and increase the speed of your PHP code.
For complex php applications like Esvon Classifieds it can provide significant performance improvement.
eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, Zend Accelerator is a commercial product.
3/ Use Content Compression. It provides 30-50% bandwidth usage reduction and even small overall performance increase.
You can consider using Apache module mod_deflate (for Apache 1.3.x) or mod_gzip.
4/ If RAM allows, make sure MyISAM key buffer size (key_buffer_size option) is large enough
to hold the indexes of your most actively used tables
(calculate the total size of your .MYI files for the tables).
5/ If you have database server and web server running on the same computer,
try to use configuration from 2 independent computers for MySQL and Apache.
There are more advanced solutions which require more technical knowledge and may be worth
a closer investigation if your website will be highly popular, i.e.:
1/ Setup static content (images) to be served off of a server optimized for that task
(with a lightweight web server like thttpd, tux, etc).
Serving static content with Apache and mod_php results in the expensive portions of the process being squandered
for high-traffic environments.
2/ Use Proxy Cache (reverse proxy, HTTP accelerator).
This is an additional server that sits in between the end user and the PHP application to reduce PHP processes time.
The proxy instance can be on a dedicated machine or simply run as a 2nd server instance on the same machine.
For Apache there are a number of excellent choices for reverse proxies - mod_proxy, mod_accel, mod_backhand, Squid.
3/ Web cluster usage. It provides much better redundancy, capacity and load balancing compared to a single Web server.
But web applications which run on a single Web server perfectly may need certain tuning to work as expected at a web cluster.
