Website fast than slow

[dan]

I will get one or two emails a week complaining about the website being slow. I have addressed this issue before, but let me try to do a better job this time.

If you go to the gallery and at that time there is only 10 to 30 people looking at the gallery, things are probably fairly fast (usually anything under 100 is ok).

If you go to the gallery and at that time there happens to be 100 to 200 people looking, things may slow down (it also depends on what those people are doing at that time).

Obviously the more people looking at the SAME TIME, the more resources are being eaten up. What type of resources? There are several but a key one is sql queries. Every time you search, click on a thumbnail, etc, a sql query is being performed by the script. When I say sql query, I'm talking about the script (i.e. Filipina Eyes Gallery) interacting with the database that stores the data (i.e. bios, photos, etc).

The data I'm typing right now will be stored in a database when I press the submit button. Every time someone clicks the link to look at this post, the forum script will be interacting with the database to retrieve the data. NOTE: that is a very simple query, but if you get hundreds of people doing it at the same time it can bottleneck the database -- even if the forum is not busy but the gallery has hundreds of visitors, it can effect the forum query as well since they are are on the same shared hosting account. This is true also of other domains who share your hosting, but I won't get into that at this time.

I'm sure every webmaster who has shared hosting has this problem when their traffic increases. If their traffic is under 100 people at any given time, the chances are they may not experience this bottleneck.

What to do?

One thing that could be done is to get a dedicated or faster server. However, as a free site, the cost to do this does not outweigh the benefit. As prices go down, this may change.

Better scripting may be a solution. New scripts are being written all the time. I have checked into some of the new technology that is now being explored and has peaked my interest. This may be a viable option except for one factor -- the changeover to a new script would be a lot of work.

I have made several changes over the past 2 years. There is a part of me that says "slow down with changes and see how things pan out". If for any reason, I know members get sick of things changing, but this factor has to be balanced with keeping up with technical advancements. For example, I experimented with a new gallery that uses some kind of new php/ajax script that requires less screen refresh and it was lightening fast. Every query was instant. I was excited but said that now is not the time to make a change since I just made one recently.

My webmaster buddies face this same problem. We exchange ideas and discuss it quite a bit. We come to the conclusion that eventually the change has to happen to keep up with the new sites who immediately take advantage of the new technology.

But a site, like Filipina Eyes, who has been around for a while and members are use to the way things work, makes it harder to make a change. Recently, I was surfing the net and notice a nice review of Filipina Eyes from a member on another site. His review as all positive but he did mention at times things slow down. However, he was wise enough to understand and countered this with the fact Filipina Eyes is FREE and uses FREE scripts to run the site.

Will I ever make a major overhaul of the scripts?

The answer is probably yes. Even if I don't want to I may be forced to do so just to keep up. You really don't have to be technically savvy to see that things are changing. All it takes is to surf the net and you see things like "My Space" "Youtube" "Facebook", etc to know that is where social networking is heading.

Why not change your current script to keep up?

Basically this is what I have been doing. Webmasters call them mods. Basically you have the basic script and there are other scripts written to change or add to the basic script. This is where some of the sql query problems come from. In most cases your basic script is optimized by one person. Than you have hundreds of mods written by 3rd party programmers that you plug in and it may make a very smooth running script slow down a little. Add enough mods or add a mod that is poorly written and it could cause some real headaches.

The smart thing to do is to get a script written by one programmer that has all the built in features from the get go and uses the latest scripting technology. Like I said, I have looked at a few social dating scripts that are impressive and if I make a major change it will be in that area. However, I think I will ride out 2007 as is.

Until further notice!!!!!

Dan

p.s. OOPS! I just reread a few of the emails and someone brought up a point I best clarify. They stated that when they go to the home page (http://www.filipinaeyes.com) things are instant yet if they click on the gallery (http://filipinaeyes.com/online-dating-gallery/) things are slow. The reason is because we are talking about two types of scripts.

A lot of the pages for Filipina Eyes is written in html. HTML is not a server side or database script. Since it is not a server side script, there is no interaction with a database. The gallery (and this forum) is written in php. They are server side scripts that interacts with a database.

If all that seems like nonsense, sorry it is the only way I know how to explain it. Just keep in mind that not all scripts are the same. PHP scripts are very popular but html is and always will be one of the mainstays of any website. Despite html popularity, it can not do the same functions as php -- consequently you may have to use php versus html to perform certain functions on a website.