Slow Slow Slow

[Danieljohn]

Hello,

I just purchased a VPS through JPC, and I set up a site, but have not yet pointed the DNS Servers to this site:

http://69.73.144.127/$sitepreview/cheerlease.com/

Our site is currently hosted elsewhere at:

http://www.cheerlease.com


They are both the exact same site, Any idea why the sitepreview on our new VPS server loads sooooo incredibly slow?


Please help!!

[homoludens]

Perhaps the sheer quantity of images in the header and not enough apache processes to serve them all at once.

Try loading the page without images.

Can I recommend turning that header into either one image, with text links or an image map, or at least turning the bottom six rows into one image?

[Danieljohn]

Why does it load faster on the original site though?

It's set up the same exact way, and it loads 100x faster on www.cheerlease.com

Daniel

[Vin DSL]

Loads fine for me - scalding fast in Arizona, actually!

n/m

I clicked on the old link - the new link is S-L-O-W!

[Danieljohn]

I live in San Diego, CA

[homoludens]

Is apache set up differently? Are you moving from a shared server?

All I know is, if I block the images your site speed is fine.

[Vin DSL]

Agreed!

I don't see any reason to slice those pics, unless you're gonna map them out...

[Danieljohn]

I transfered from a shared server.

How do I set it up to load the images faster?.. other than combining the images into one... I may do that as a last resort.

Thanks for all your help guys!

Daniel

[Vin DSL]

I dunno...

Maybe compressing the output using GZIP would help, or install a cache, or both.

How much memory are you running?

[homoludens]

Increase the number of available child servers in httpd.conf.

I'd be loath to advise you on that as I'm a noobieklut (tm) and don't want to be responsible for dragging your VPS or hardware node into the mud.

[Danieljohn]

I'm running 256mb on the vps.

how do i compress the output as GZIP or install as cache?

[Vin DSL]

Hrm...

I'm playing around with it - hold on.

http://www.lenon.com/cheerlease/

[Danieljohn]

Would you say it's for sure in the site design that is making it slow?

Daniel

[homoludens]

It's a contributing factor.

[jason]

I got about equal speeds from both servers, neither was all that impressive, actually.

Definitely get rid of the sliced images. That was a popular way to do things back in the days of 28k dialup to give a better perception of speed, but it is outdated by today's standard.

The HTTP spec only allows for two concurrent connections to the same server. In other words, the browser has to download all of those images two at a time and with each image come a lot of overhead. If you merge them all into one you'll decrease the number of connections you have to make, putting less stress on the server.

On your shared plan you probably had access to mammoth resources (lots of memory and processor power), so the server could handle all of those request pretty quickly. With a VPS you give up a lot of that power for the flexibility of having root. The VPS is more like running your site from an old desktop that's been sitting in your attic--it can be a good solid server, but not at the same caliber as a quad-processor top of the line server with 8GB of RAM (like JPC uses for their servers).

So I definitely recommend rejoining those images.

--Jason