[theme-reviewers] Proposal for a new guideline and plugin function

Robb Shecter robb at weblaws.org
Tue Apr 24 16:06:02 UTC 2012


Yep. A Linode 1536, kept intentionally nearly idle and with about 800MB of ram for caching. Using stock Apache, PHP, and Mysql  with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. 

All of my optimization time has been spent on my Rails apps. So for sure, the Wordpress installs may benefit from Nginx and some other improvements. 


On Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 8:51 AM, Doug Stewart wrote:

> Not to pee in your cornflakes, Otto, but his article DID point out
> he's on a Linode VPS already.
> 
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com (mailto:otto at ottodestruct.com)> wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Robb Shecter <robb at weblaws.org (mailto:robb at weblaws.org)> wrote:
> > > Yes, I guess so ... but now talking about a CDN means we're talking about
> > > well funded, pro users, and that's not really my concern here. I'm thinking
> > > about both novice as well as technically savvy users who are simply starting
> > > a new blog as I was. I just wanted a reliable WP install, and I thought I
> > > was being conservative: installing only WP, a featured theme from the Admin
> > > panel, and a single plugin, Akismet.
> > > 
> > > It turns out that this setup is *not* reliable; in fact, it could lock you
> > > out of your server.
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > Okay...
> > 
> > While I agree that a theme serving 36 static images on a
> > single-page-load is stupid, this is not the primary problem here.
> > 
> > Server configuration is a highly complex topic. Yes, a default Apache
> > install using mod_php or even FastCGI would choke and die under such a
> > load, and that's what you get for getting cheap shared hosting. No
> > amount of theme optimization is going to save you there though, and
> > even though your case had a problem with serving static files, other
> > cases won't. *This is a problem with your setup, not with the theme*.
> > You have to have your setup capable of handling the expected load. A
> > well-setup server using nginx and perhaps proxy caching, along with an
> > object caching plugin (like W3 Total Cache, which I use), could handle
> > that sort of load just fine, even with a good redditing (hyeh hyeh
> > hyeh!).
> > 
> > Bottom line: If you care about your website working at all, then it's
> > worth more than $20 a month. "Well-funded"? For under $30 a month you
> > can get a hosting account that will handle very large loads of 300k+
> > visitors, easily. If you're wedded to your $5 plan, then yeah, you're
> > going to fail under large traffic. No amount of optimization of your
> > PHP code will fix that. What you've fixed by switching themes is
> > temporary, at best. You got the site working again, but you didn't
> > really fix the underlying problem.
> > 
> > > I guess that for me, I'd sum it up like this: Wordpress is making a promise
> > > to users. That, out of the box, it'll work well. Not well enough to handle
> > > true slashdotting or front page of cnn.com (http://cnn.com), but well enough for small
> > > traffic and the occasional link from Hacker News.
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > No, WordPress is not making that promise, because that promise is
> > completely unrealistic. On most shared hosting I've seen, even 100%
> > static sites will fail under a moderate load. Shared hosting is
> > oversold to hell, slow, and frequently buggy. If you expect to get any
> > real traffic, then you need to switch to a higher tier. Maybe a VPS.
> > 
> > -Otto
> > _______________________________________________
> > theme-reviewers mailing list
> > theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org (mailto:theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org)
> > http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -Doug
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> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
> 
> 


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