Up until now, I haven’t had any close experience doing server-side optimization of a highly-trafficked blog. When I say “highly-trafficked”, I mean it’s like being on the front page of Digg all day, 7 days a week.
I have had some experiences with vBulletin forums getting concurrent connections in the vicinity of 500 but a WordPress blog clocking in 1,000 concurrent connections is something else. Btw, I’m talking about Rickey’s blog on Americal Idol.
The blog peaks at 1,161 concurrent users during peak hours.
Here are some stuff I’ve learned so far and I hope will be of good use to other bloggers who reaches this level of traffic:
- If you can afford it, get two separate dedicated servers to host Apache and mySQL. So we’ve got a Pentium 4 2.8GHz Dual Core with 3GB of RAM to run Apache and all static files and another Pentium 2.8GHz with 4GB of RAM to run mySQL. This set up seems better than my own Dual Xeon server with 4GB of RAM.
- Upgrade to PHP5 and mySQL5 if you haven’t done so. Both newer versions have general performance benefits over the older ones.
- Optimize server configurations. Most new owners of dedicated servers will have to face the challenge of having a good mix of settings in their php.ini, httpd.conf and my.cnf. Here is where you set connection limits, time outs, and memory caching/allocation. Making the most of your available server memory will determine whether your server will conk out or not when the moment strikes and the barrage of traffic comes in.
- PHP Opcode Caching. There are several free ones available such as eAccelerator, Alternative PHP Cache (APC), and the XCache. These are basically frameworks for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code and really helps if you run a lot of WP plugins.
- For WordPress blogs, running WP Super Cache is highly recommended. You can also use PHP Speedy to compress and speed up page deliveries.
- Monitor. Tweak. Optimize. Wash, rinse and repeat. You won’t hit it the first time and it’s gonna be frustrating. Just watch out for the peak hours, log the volume of traffic, watch their behavior (commenters vs. viewers) and tweak again based on that volume.
As for the cost, it depends and will vary between a hundred dollars to a couple hundred. Server management is the most expensive IMO as they charge as much as $75 per hour just to take a look at your server.
And no, a 500GB + 5 terabyte $20/month shared hosting will not cut it. They’ll kick you out before your blog can even reach 1TB.
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Thanks for the tips Abe, I was contemplating the same thing… Got a directory site before with huge traffic which 90% are bots. I didn’t receive any notice from a Phil. host, they just closed the account. So it is always good to have a dedicated hosting…
Nice server optimization tips. If you are “earning much” from your blogs then I would like to add the idea of co-locating your servers to a nice colo-company where you can get a bigger bandwidth (T1/E1/T3/DS3/ATM etc) at a lower price.
- Use a software/hardware Load Balancer.
- If your memory is ok, the bottleneck usually is MySQL. Do a MySQL replication to distribute the mysql load to multiple servers without compromising data integrity.
- Cache ,cache and cache. Opcode caching is ok. Memcache would be best if you set up a clustered server.
Very nice tip! I agree to Lintek for his comment. I know there are few hosting company that host highly traffic website like media temple. In hostmonster they host 15terabyte of hosting space and transfer.
By the way nice mobile website this post via mobile device.
Keep up the good post abe!
Rickey is the man
I use rdns between 4 quad xeons for mp3-codes.com. consuming about 200TB’s of bandwidth/month.
Ey Abe, am clocking in at around 3K per day now. Got a bandwith limit error already on my host. Got suggestions on which hosting plan has most bang for the buck?
Thanks
For people who cant afford a dedicated server you can try a host that uses a grid server technology or a something like split shared technology, actually im planning to move to a split shared host but im still reviewing this host its $25/month compared to my current host which is $9/month so theres a big difference.
@GMTristan - have you tried doing some caching for your WP like the SuperCache? Or if you hosta lot of media files, you may want to remote host most of them to save up on bandwidth. You may want to look into MediaTemple later on though.
yuga/gmtristan - check webhostingtalk.com before getting your host, check for their review, there are threads about media temple thats why I didnt get a host from media temple yet, im stil checking their reviews.
Thanks for the tips, guys. Will check them out and give you updates.
Much appreciated. More power to your blogs and sites!
Peace
Get a dedicated server, o, di ba Yuga? I love mine hehehehhe
thanks for the post. i hope to read some more.
Best regards from Sebbi
the idea of separating apache and mysql into two different server seems to be not that good when it comes to server security…