I need help determining if we can really use Drupal and MySQL for a new site being planned for the Special Olympics of Northern California. I just read through another thread here by a "novice" and that "novice" knows WAY more than I do, so please know that while I'm a good Drupal designer, I know NOTHING about real performance issues.
The Special Olympics has a limited budget and I, nor anyone, will be setting up and managing the server configuration. We are looking at commercial hosts like GoDaddy.com and I'd like to use GoDaddy if it's not ridiculous for our needs.
The site, http://sonc.org, is not currently a Drupal site, but a Dreamweaver site (mostly). The Drupal site is being modeled after:
Compete.com and Quantcast show the site averaging from 3000-9000 visits per month. The site has a Google ranking of 5/10.
The future Drupal site will have about the same number of pages that you can see at the current sonc site.
- An important goal is for the site to store information/profiles/registration data for about 13,000 volunteers and 11,000 athletes. Probably a VERY low percentage of those users will be logging in regularly. The site will host an events calendar and a listing of sports ands the counties associated with the sports. There will be pages for County information, which counties stored as a content type. There will be school programs and sports stored and content types and referenced to counties.
The largest record set would seem to be the Users with the volunteer and athlete records.
** I will be using custom panels on most pages, with Views-created blocks and content panes. Primarily because they are wanting the page to have a certain row structure.
Also, there will be photo galleries and video galleries. I'm hoping that the video gallery will just be embedded video fields of videos hosted off-site. However the photo galleries will probably, maybe be hosted on-site.
From what you're hearing so far, can this site be practically hosted with someone like GoDaddy, using the latest Drupal 6 (SIX) and MySQL Community Server 5.0.91 with MyISAM storage engine apparently and PHP 5.2.17? This would be LAMP/Linux/Apache. I'd have to ask GoDaddy about InnoDB. I don't truly understand the importance of the storage engine, sorry- I'm not a server admin really.
Also, GoDaddy does offer Windows hosting where I assume I could use SQL server as the underlying database.
I know my question clarifies that I'm clueless, so please reply with "kid gloves". Regardless of what happens, the Special Olympics of NorCal needs a cost-effective and self-managing web hosting database server. Or so it seems to me so far.
If you see this during this week of March 1, 2011, please reply with advice ASAP since we have to decide what our database options are. But any replies at any time will be good. PLEASE HELP!
Comments
First off, I'm of the
First off, I'm of the personal opinion that all Go Daddy services should be avoided. All of them. They race to the bottom, and it shows. I personally have had the displeasure of hosting Drupal sites on their hosting service, and it hasn't been pleasant, though it was long enough ago that I can't exactly recall why. Their advertising is pretty despicable, too, if you care about such things - and I can't help but do so. Anyway, there are other shared hosting services which should be able to suit your needs for the same or not much more money. One of my personal faves is ASmallOrange.
Anyway, given some basic performance tuning and a decent host, I think there should be no problem hosting a site like yours on Drupal. But given that you're a newbie and apparently somewhat in a bit of a panic, I'd strongly recommend getting someone to partner with to help you out. I understand that you're on a limited budget, but given that you're working for a well-established and -regarded charity, you may be able to find someone to help you out for a reduced price or even for free.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
Thank you- and GoDaddy
Garrett,
First, I thank you for your reply.
For years I was offended by the Danika obsession and all those boobs and I personally know that Bob Parsons is an old pervert. But GoDaddy is not JUST Bob Parsons. I did complain directly to him once that there were never any men in the ads and a month later they put up the image of one of the famous male NASCAR rivers- LOL still NASCAR- and only for a month or two- but it showed that they might listen occasionally. The sexism thing is a weird gimmick at this point.
nonetheless, I have gotten such AMAZING tech support from GoDaddy over the phone- simply amazing- fast, live, well-spoken, coherent, non-scripted, experienced- I really think you're being a big baby or knee-jerk PC in disrespecting them completely.
Meanwhile,GoDaddy may NOT be the best host, and I'm willing to believe that, especially for Drupal installations. So what will really help me is if people can give me some sense/idea of what to look for in a hosting provider, and perhaps even a solid recommendation for a specific hosting provider. I see below that a few people say to "look around" but with that being the only advice, it doesn't add much to my existing knowledge base of expectations.
I DO appreciate your help! I've just had a very different overall experience with goDaddy. I've had MUCH MUCH worse service with Network Solutions! I've seen people quite happy with Siteground but primarily for Joomla installations, though one of my Drupal clients actually uses Siteground.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
So what will really help me
As I mentioned in my previous post, I had success using ASmallOrange. I haven't hosted with them for a while, having graduated to a small FreeBSD VPS account at another host, but they're still my go-to recommendation for shared hosting.
With regards to Go Daddy's advertising (and yes, the company's name is technically two separate words), it's not only the sexuality that annoys me; it's also the pervasiveness and the persistent upselling. My current host and registrar (two separate companies) do not advertise during the Super Bowl, choosing instead to just provide humble, good-quality services instead, and I think they're all the better for it.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
The disk space allocation at
The disk space allocation at Small Orange just seems minial, don't you think?
It's true that GoDaddy.com (which is why I leave out the space, but it hardly matters to me since no one can correctly use less vs few or much vs many anynmore anyway LOL) has lots of annoying marketing. And I have no desire to be psychologically dependent upon them. I just have experience with them and the phone support has been very good for me, way better than Network Solutions in every way.
I see two recommendations for webfaction.com which looks fairly inexpensive and the implicatio by others seems to be that 80MB of dedicated memory would be better than possibly simply believeing I have 128mb on a shared server like GoDaddy's...But I get confused because the Drupal report specifically inside Drupal recommends 96MB+ in my incomplete test site...
I do get nervous recommending hosts I've never tried. And for some reason if I hear that a host uses Fantastico for its admin panel, that alwys seems amateurish to me. Which would make me worry.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
The disk space allocation at
It seems that way because they do not oversell as pretty much all bargain hosts do.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
GoDaddy
I have one site on GoDaddy shared hosting. It's a good testbed for me, because they are one of the worst shared hosting providers out there. Cron can be unreliable and if anything takes over 20 seconds of CPU time it will get killed. That being said the Boost module works surprisingly well on it because I built Boost to handle GoDaddy hosting.
Recommendations:
Pressflow - every millisecond adds up on shared hosting. Replacement for drupal core.
Boost - use the latest dev. Apache page cache in short. This will give you huge gains for anonymous users.
DB Tuner - use the latest dev. Improve your views queries.
Fast 404s - do it.
Imageinfo Cache - Generate imagecache presets when file is uploaded; instead of on demand.
Advanced CSS/JS Aggregation- Won't be user friendly for another week or so.Views Javascript Random - If you have a random view you should consider using this.
Ajax Blocks - If you have a block that contains data that changes regularly and your using a page cache (like boost) then this is a good idea.
One to avoid and one to approach
Another to avoid is IX Web Hosting if you want to use Drupal. I have a couple of simple hand-crafted sites with them and they are fine but they won't give you more than 80MB RAM which just isn't enough for Drupal. I have had Drupal sites running on there but you can't do any admin or have people logged in because it just runs out of space.
In the UK, for shared hosting, there's Purley Hosting who use Drupal themselves and give you a good chunk of memory. Always helpful and have a good service.
Memory requirements
Actually I think that when I ran a status report on one of my Drupal sites on GoDaddy it said I should have more memory allocated- at least 96mb. My PHP Memory limit is currently 64M. So that WOULD seem to be a GoDaddy issue for me to consider.
What's a good amount?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Budget
"Limited budget" can mean different things to different organizations. It's definitely worth it to shop around for a host. As Garrett said, it doesn't sound as though you'll need much more than a well-tuned Drupal app and a good host to handle this traffic.
If the organization can handle up to $25/mo in hosting costs, then you have an array of options. There are a few on drupal.org/hosting and many elsewhere on the web.
I second what Garrett said, though: finding a partner who's well-versed in the server side of Drupal/LAMP apps will greatly reduce your stress level.
Thank you- and can you recommend a good host?
If you think you can recommend a host that you think is very very Drupal friendly, please let me know.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
budget
And honestly I would love to say that $25 per month sounds reasonable, especially with an organization that has 13000 volunteers and 10000 athletes, but they always seem to me to be acting like they can't afford anything and even hope for DONATED hosting.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
The last shared hosting I
The last shared hosting I used was Vexx Hosting and they were really good. I had a couple of Drupal sites on there, and in 2 years only experienced maybe 3 problems, that they fixed almost instantly. One of the sites sometimes saw over 5,000 hits in a day. The servers were very fast in response (ie: they don't seem to overload them with tons of accounts) and, depending on the video needs, they can even encode videos with FFMPEG, making it relatively easy to set up a full video site with Drupal.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Awesome, thanks
Intoxination, thanks so much. That's the kind of specific recommendation that really helps. Did you use the base $4 hosting or the $35 semi-dedicated? Or something else?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Yup that's the one. It's been
Yup that's the one. It's been a couple of years and I see they cut the price in 1/2 on it.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
hi Miko.. godaddy..
I feel like I should throw my 2 cents into this discussion.
Special Olympics are great; your site will get some good traffic -
I moved most of my small sites to godaddy a few years ago as I began exploring Drupal CMS.
I spent countless.. literally - hours - banging my head against the desk and waiting waitin waitng for assets to render .. I built a campaign site for a local supervisor's race using drupal 6; I volunteered my time - (I'd be a rich man if i billed by the hour :) It was extremely difficult & I thought it was all due to my lack of knowledge but I finally came to the understanding that the servers at godaddy were making my work so much more difficult.
I like the responsiveness of godaddy's tech support as well.. they are super nice.. But, at one point I did a straight comparison, fresh install, of drupal and a fresh install on AHNosting (and this is not an endorsement...just what i did) - the page response / latency on the godaddy vs new host was dramatic.. on a fresh install at the other host page refresh was almost immediate .while the godaddy freshly installded drupal 6 stie, page response lag would be a count of 9-10 seconds.
If you do decide to use godaddy, yes, the Boost module is essential - an amazing tool. (thank you to the developers of Boost!)
Godaddy has alot of sites calling on their db servers..
additionally.. on my newer host /provider I am able to have 'shell access' so I can use 'Drush' which is a stunning time savings tool..
I recently had to work on one of my older drupal / godaddy sites..and yep, tech support is great. The latency is a killer.. anything you do will take 10x as long to accomplish.. good luck.. Love the special olympics..
Thank you eggonbeagle
Thanks to you also. I'll take a look at AHNosting- or is is ANHosting?
Note that just thins morning I called GoDaddy about a latency issue on one site and they explained that the site with that issue was using legacy hosting which uses FastCGI for PHP, among other things, and they got me to request the site upgrade to the new 4GH hosting configuration, which doesn't cost anything, it's just newer and you have to request it. So, Were your GoDaddy latency issues more than two years old or do you know if the sire is using legacy rather than the new GRID hosting?
Thanks for everything. And yes, I'm excited to be helping a non-profit that everyone can guiltlessly universally support without reference to any specific politics or religion!
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
check also webfaction.com
check also webfaction.com (shared hosting), you can even install memcached
SeaDUG
@Miko
If your in the Seattle area you should come to the next SeaDUG meeting. If you want I can meet with you at the coworking at Moka Coffee. Last time I was there I was able to help rocksoup with a mobile caching issue. http://drupal.org/node/361832#comment-4110568.
SEADUG
Thanks "Mikey". I signed up for user group but it takes place on 3/17 and I think I need to help make this hosting decision before then. I don't now what the "coworking" means... it took me forever to get involved on the groups site.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
coworking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking
For me I show up and help people out with any performance questions/issues they might have on their Drupal site. What ever host you decide to use, we can make it work. Their might be some trade offs but that's the name of the game. If you can get a host that has memcache that would be my best.
memcache
How do I ask a web host if they have memcache? Does GoDaddy- do you know?
I still don't know from any responses if people think my site is "big" or really needy of "high performance' or not,. from what I've been able to communicate so far.
Do you or does anyone know how much the MyISAM vs. InnoDB thing really matter- are they actually different storage engines?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Looking at the site, it's
Looking at the site, it's very simple. I don't even see where you have commenting on there and I doubt the content will be updated all that frequently (more then 10-12x per day). Honestly, I would just install the Boost module and you would be fine with about any hosting, since Boost essentially creates a static copy of your site and serves that without touching PHP/MySQL (unless a requested page isn't there and needs regenerated).
Even with the registration of volunteers and what not, it appears your traffic is going to be vastly anonymous users, so Boost will be your best friend here.
As far as memcache, GoDaddy doesn't offer it on shared hosting. I doubt you would even really need it if they are only getting 3,000-9,000 visitors per month. Even on the high end, that's only 300 visitors per day. I've ran drupal sites using Drupal comments, 60+ modules and just the default Drupal caching and it handled 2-3x that amount of traffic with no problem at all. Memcached only helps a lot if you have cached data that constantly needs to be recalculated. Standard Drupal caching caches data in the database. That means you end up getting the benefit of query cache inside of MySQL if your cached data isn't constantly updating, so you might actually see better performance from using MySQL caching over memcached.
As far as InnoDB verses MyISAM, InnoDB is better in heavy write environments. As I said, you appear to not have that issue, so I would just stick with MyISAM, which generally performs better in heavy read environments (and yes - they are both storage engines).
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
again thanks, and site visits
Intoxination- much appreciated info. The one thing is that the peak visits are 9000 per DAY not month, according to Compete.com. I don't know how much of a difference that makes. It's true that there will not be commenting!
This Boost thing sounds like a much-loved module so I'm now definitely planning on adding it.
Thanks again.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
I just checked that site
I just checked that site against one of mine in Compete. They are really close, with a couple of days where your site is a little higher. The site I compared it against only gets 200-300 hits per day.
From a professional standpoint, I would advise your client of the pitfalls of shared hosting. I've gone through numerous ones over the years. You get people telling you that X company is the best, but you end up getting thrown on an overloaded server and have a site down countless times per day. I've also experienced hosting companies that everyone complains about, but had nothing but good luck from them.
That's the key point to explain - you just can't guarantee the performance once the site is live. You have one major variable out of your control - other sites hosted on that server. All it takes is one site on that server to have some crappy code running and everyone else sitting on that server gets impacted.
Also when I do site deployments for customers, if they want to go shared or VPS, my contract includes a section explaining that I will deploy the code on that server, but do not guarantee any performance from that server. If the next day their hosting company can't handle it, I will move their site again, but they will have to pay my regular hourly rate to do so. I always include to them what the site performance will be like under given parameters, generally of a bare minimum dedicated server, unless they know their traffic is going to be higher.
My suggestion would be to go with a larger hosting company, like HostGator, Bluehost or 1and1. Start off with the smaller plan and if you are having problems with that, stick with them and upgrade to a larger plan. That way things like DNS propagation and transferring site files isn't really a big hassle. As matter of fact, your client could handle the transfer themselves by just calling the hosting provider.
I do echo what everyone else has said about GoDaddy though - I have had nothing but nightmares with them. They are fine for the small static site, but when you get into the dynamics of a CMS like Drupal, they start having problems.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
I have some domains
I have some domains registered with 1and1. Bought them due to the price, and it's nice that they have whois privacy, but you can't add A or MX entries. Don't know what their hosted offerings let you do in regards to dns management.
Linode offers four cores, dns
Linode offers four cores, dns management, 16gb, and stack scripts. Lately, they had a $100k giveaway, but I haven't noticed an impact. I'm starting to look for a SSD VPS, and two cores would be fine for me. That should affect time to first byte latency, for all pages. Shared hosting means higher migration costs once there's growth, but they can help with provisioning, or meet simple needs.
Cores/SSD
Thanks. I don't understand the value of the cores here- you mean processor cores? Or what SSD is. Or what stack scripts are. I know what VPS is but not actually how it helps. So much of what you just said was lost on me. I guess I have to Google all of that.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Cores = processing cores. I
Cores = processing cores. I have a personal site on Linode's smallest slice that got a huge Reddit hit a couple of months ago (84,000+ page views in 24 hours) and it handled fine. Of course I am running Varnish in front of everything and that helps out a ton, but setting up and managing varnish takes some work and experience.
SSD is a Solid State Drive, or a hard drive with no mechanical parts. They are still relatively new to the scene. Not a lot of hosts are using them yet.
Stack scripts are scripts that basically automate installing and configuring different things.
The problem with going the VPS route, you will have to manage the hosting also. If you aren't familiar with server admin, it can be a little bit overwhelming at first, but it is also a great learning experience. My suggesting is to set up a VPS on your own computer, using something like VirtualBox and installing the distribution you would want to use and cut your teeth on that with installing and configuring everything.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
oh ok...
OK, I know what Solid State drives are. Last I heard they were fast but still could have huge random errors at times. Seems very risky to use them for servers at this point?
I think that a VPS would be a great learning experience but I think SONC can't support, at this point, too much learning on the job, not if there's another solution. I've set up virtual computers before, of course, and I even used to be a UNIX Administrator, but i'm worried it's just a lot of work. We're hoping to have a site up by May 31.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Depends on the research of
Depends on the research of the vps and ssd vendors available, naturally. Turnkeylinux.org offers some images, anandtech.com states that wear leveling algorithms, drive controllers, among other factors make certain new generation of ssd brands and sata controllers better on most metrics. You will have to do research to come to a conclusive determination for your needs if going this route.
kinda hoping...
Kinda hoping that Linode would be overkill for us... it seems like it would not be self-managing at all. The Special Olympics Regional sites i'll be supporting, NorCal and Nevada, will never have a full-time person to maintain a virtual server I don't think, if the extra workload is what I think it would be.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
It's not that much of an
It's not that much of an additional workload. The biggest part is the initial setup. That's where the key is. Do a lot of benchmarking to make sure it can handle expected peek loads and after that you generally have smooth sailing.
After that maybe just updating packages here and there, which is really simple.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Time consuming to learn,
Time consuming to learn, especially if only using google. Updating packages isn't always smooth sailing either, depending on major updates to versions of programs. There's a reason rhel admins command high salaries with at least 3 yr exp.
That's why I usually
That's why I usually recommend going with CentOS. I've got over 20 servers for different clients I handle management on. A vast majority are CentOS, since I set them up. I never have any problems doing a simple yum update. I also got a couple of clients with other distros (one Ubuntu and one FreeBSD). On those I run into constant nightmares running updates.
I do think a lot boils down to experience, and yeah - learning by Google can be a nightmare. You always run into so much mixed information that you end up just wanting to pull your hair out.
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
Centos, the first I tried due
Centos, the first I tried due to stability, but due to release of php 5 at the time, yum didn't have it. That distro is conservative, and debian has the most packages, which means knowledge the of command line tends to be deferred a bit. Building with source more likely with centos. Don't know what it offers now, but perhaps kvm documentation more readily available. Kvm disk drivers tends to minimize virtualization penalty when compared to xen. Does affect performance consideration a bit as customer or marketer.
For PHP 5.2.x I always use
For PHP 5.2.x I always use the utterramblings repositories. EPEL has 5.3
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
kinda hoping...
Kinda hoping that Linode would be overkill for us... it seems like it would not be self-managing at all. The Special Olympics Regional sites i'll be supporting, NorCal and Nevada, will never have a full-time person to maintain a virtual server I don't think, if the extra workload is what I think it would be.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
SSDs are definitely beyond
SSDs are definitely beyond what the OP needs.
But while we're on the topic, we should deflate some of the hype. SSDs will only be useful for sites where your stuff does not fit within memory. Be that static files, HTTP requests cached by Varnish, or your database. But since memory is far cheaper and much faster than an SSD you are better off just getting more RAM. SSDs will only help when you simply can't install more RAM into the machine. Practically this means a database with tens of millions of rows - not your average Drupal site.
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Sorry Dalin, but linode
Sorry Dalin, but linode sometimes serves a front page that takes 10+ seconds due to other users, and it is the same story with shared hosting when multiple users are using the hard disk. More ram does not give you more persistence. Since ssds are an option along with regular hard drives, in terms of random access speeds out of the box, a system with a ssd will give you the best performance. So a service with one resource node of ssd space, and then, along with the recommendation of your analysis, it will balance the rest of any needs. You are correct that miko is price conscious though - tradeoffs are always necessary, and telling that story is worthwhile to manage growth.
If you are talking about a
If you are talking about a VPS with shared storage with SSDs, then that would be like running a three-legged race on an olympic-quality track. Sure you might be faster, but you're still tied to someone else who is sometimes slowing you down, sometimes severely. Better to just untie yourself from everyone else. Then if you still have issues with disk i/o then add more RAM so that the disks don't have to be touched (and of course re-tune the server accordingly). If you can't add any more RAM then consider SSDs, but given the price/performance ratio that really only applies to sites the scale of examiner.com or d.o.
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Dalin, cache management can
Dalin, cache management can be tricky business which as you know turns into operating costs. It's good to have a default SSD random access read level i/o rate (i.e. Selects) while working on such issues, and since they don't use spindles, how a system accesses a SSD drive isn't analogous like you stated. Then again, a vps vendor could add more ram and have more os guests, impacting bandwith and cpu, or some other combination. I migrated away from vps.net since linode had more ram, but they offered a ssd option some time ago. Your stated use case is about volume, while other use cases (such as for boutique shops) have the need for faster landing pages to have less bounced users. So they're more consumption oriented retail sites. In other cases, you may have multiple clients on independent, non-prefixed databases as part of a multisite. I'm looking for the tradeoff from less included bandwith, cpu, less regular stock hard drive space, and perhaps 10% less memory, for 2gbs or so of ssd space at the same price.
SSDs will only help when you
I phrased that poorly. Sure they'll help, it's just a more costly move for not as much gain.
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Getting the most out of shared hosting
For anyone that's interested, I did a talk at a meetup a few months ago on how to get the most out of shared hosting. I went over the pros and cons of shared hosting and how it's different from virtualized (VPS) hosting and dedicated hosting.
It more or less covers what everyone is already talking about here, but do check it out if video is your thing. One of these days I'll do a follow up and go into the fun and gory details about what VPS and dedicated hosting are and how they're different (and superior, in my opinion) to shared hosting.
Thanks Christefano- i'll
Thanks Christefano- i'll check it out. Everyone-
I'm chatting with AN Hosting and they just lost out big time. The sales guy just told me that the PHP MEORY LIMIT IS ONLY 32 MB.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
32mb can handle a lot of
32mb can handle a lot of Drupal sites. It really depends on what all you put into it. One larger site I handle has 70 modules in it, but gets by with 32mb. Almost all the modules are custom though, and I put a ton of optimization into them to keep resources low (this was more or less a Drupal as a framework build).
Another site I just took over from a larger Drupal shop has 100 modules. The memory limit is set at 256mb because some pages just need it. We're now in talks to do some major redesign work and bring that down.
A lot of shared hosting lets you increase the memory limit either via .htaccess or in your PHP code (ini_set('memory_limit', 'XXM'); in settings.php).
HollyIT - Grab the Netbeans Drupal Development Tool at GitHub.
or the php5.ini file
I've seen also that some let you create a php.ini/php5.ini file in the hosting root. i'm looking into that. With our use of Views and Panels especially, and the need for CCK, I think we'll have to have at least 64mb and almost certainly 96mb, if we can get that.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
i have a website hosted with
i have a website hosted with webfaction.com (http://tinyurl.com/6esemq6) with 50 modules (views,panels). The default memory for php is 128MB and you have 80MB free DEDICATED memory so you can install memcached and link it with drupal. I have currently cacherouter in file mode. You can go to the website and create an account so you can see how fast it is because boost is installed for anon.
counting modules, and VPS memory equivs
ddorian - thanks. What does it mean that 80MB dedicated equates to 256MB in a VPS? Also, when people are counting their modules are they counting by folders, or checkboxes on the Modules list screen?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
I count by folders. In a vps
I count by folders. In a vps with 512 MB ram you must reserve ram for linux,apache,mysql etc. At webfacion you can have 80 MB(upgradable) only for memcached,mongodb,custom webserver etc. And php scripts memory is not counted.
I used hotdrupal.com for over
I used hotdrupal.com for over a year for shared hosting and they were very good, with almost no downtime. I still have sites I maintain for friends on hotdrupal.com though I moved my own stuff to a Linode VPS so I could have complete control of the environment. Linode.com has been excellent, but it doesn't sound like you want to deal with maintaining the OS.
I had 1&1 prior to hotdrupal.com and my sites there were often slow.
Regarding memory, I use 48M for my sites and it's fine, however, I use Drush for cronjobs and updates and Drush uses cli with no memory limit. The warning you got about 96M happens when you use imagecache with the gd image toolkit. Because gd runs inside the PHP process you can use a lot of memory when doing certain image processing tasks involving large images or multiple images. One way to avoid that problem is to use the imagemagick toolkit instead of gd (or graphicsmagick which is a compatible fork of imagemagick). The imagemagick toolkit runs a separate executable outside the PHP process so you don't need a large PHP memory limit to process large/multiple image files. Most hosts will have imagemagick/graphicsmagick installed.
So, to chime in with another opinion:
+1 hotdrupal.com
+1 linode.com
-1 1&1.com
+1 to imagemagick toolkit over gd toolkit to make large PHP memory limit unnecessary
1&1
Thanks for commenting on 1&1 because I'm webmaster for tovolo.com and that site uses 1&1 but it's not a content-managed site and isn't visit-heavy.
I'm surprised about ImageMagick being better but you hit the nail on the head- ImageAPI (I think- or similar- definitely image related) was the component complaining about memory limit on my current test site.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
You're all awesome, and summary so far
OK, thanks so much everyone. Here's what I think I've learned so far:
I'm still not sure what DRUSH does or is but i'm looking into it. I STILL am fascinated by GoDaddy because I trust them, love their enthusiastic support, and as soon as I called them, they told me how to increase my memory limit, with a hosting-root php5.ini. Which worked as far as tricking phpinfo- is that enough? They also explained that with an activated (free) SSL cert in the $15 account, I'm automatically placed on a server that houses far fewer other sites, greatly decreasing the potential for latency.
So these are all of the gurgle of thoughts you all have inspired. Thanks a lot and I will seriously suck up ANY more information that you provide. And thanks MikeyTown2 for writing Boost- that was you, right? Apparently everyone really loves it.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Hey Miko; I've been watching
Hey Miko;
I've been watching this thread for a few days with great interest. I should start this off with saying that I work for Acquia (www.acquia.com) and since I'm about to suggest our hosting, you can take what I have to say with that in mind.
We have some really cool offerings that may fit well with what you need. The first is Drupal Gardens. Drupal Gardens is a system for creating Drupal sites all online. The system has a set of modules ready to roll, an online theme builder (that is REALLY sweet) and best of all, the starter package is free! We've also just rolled out a new UI to views 3 that we have spent a lot of time on and are contributing back to the community that is absolutely awesome.
Gardens runs in Amazon's cloud, and the sites are behind nginx load balancing and varnish reverse proxy, so you get all of that advanced configuration without having to know anything about it.
Another thing that you may want to consider at some point (though it looks like it may be out of your price range right now) is our new Dev Cloud servers. These are single servers in Amazon's cloud which also sit behind varnish and give you not only an entire server. I think the starting price there is around $100/month.
Both of those offerings are nice for you because all Acquia does is run Drupal sites, so we're kinda good at it ;)
Another option that I would strongly consider, were I you, would be Rackspace's cloud servers (http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/pricing/). If you can get someone to set up the environment for you then these servers are really great. I have a few I use for dev sites and small sites that cost me only about $25/month, but since they are cloud servers, if I get big traffic I can add ram and CPUs on the fly to speed the box up.
Upside there is price, downside is you have to manage the machine.
Hi there. Yes, I know Acquia
Hi there. Yes, I know Acquia quite well- don't we all? I actually use Artisteer for theme building- it's AMAZING and I doubt anything online can even get close to matching all of the things it can do. Plus is helps to be able to save the file and all of the design versions.
I appreciate the Acquia installer with Microsoft's Web Platform installer and Webmatrix setup because it gives me a way to quickly give people a home server testing environment with pre-installed modules.
I'll take a look at Drupal Gardens- sounds enticing! If not for sonc.org, for something I'm doing, I'm sure!
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Drupal Gardens AJAX bug
Hey, I went to try to hit the sign up button at Drupal Gardens and I get this error:
"An AJAX HTTP request terminated abnormally.
Debugging information follows.
Path: http://drupalgardens.com?output=modal&product_nid=476
StatusText:
ResponseText:
ReadyState: 4"
Then I only see a droplet on a large blank pop-up window.
Just thought you'd want to know.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Other points worth
Other points worth considering: Artisteer's most recent version supports D7. It's not a bad tool, but it isn't geared for customization by themers if you need more control. I tried drupal gardens as well; free to customize, but there is a lack of default themes to reconfigure. Changing the headers, colors, and background images goes a long way to getting more use out of gardens, but it is the same for artisteer. There is also display suite, but it sort of has a learning curve between simple views and views and it also has around a 5%+ performance hit? The numbers for that were posted somewhere. Personally, I've decided on the Omega framework/theme for awhile. Gd is faster and has broader support than imagemagick but it is memory constrained by php as noted. Ssd usage isn't gimmicky depending on the cost and type of usage, but there isn't wide availability and research has to be done to get it right. Pressflow is limited to mysql, but that is the majority of drupal users. It handles anonymous sessions really well from what I heard, but it requires infrastructure or support by the host if you don't have access to root, due to varnish/memcache etc. You also have to think about the support available. Aside from tuning the individual components (mysql, php, etc.), the rest comes down to following the documentation available and any glue code if necessary to implement the cache logic and cache management, so it leans more on php and mysql knowledge. Fun stuff, I tell you Miko. =)
Oh, another thing that I haven't seen mentioned is security. Running a vps generally requires you to understand how to setup a firewall.
Artisteer
Sorry to continue off topic but I just want to follow-up: I get a lot of the hard themer work done in artisteer but then I have a full set of instructions that I've made for myself afterward to implement them on my site. For one, I need a transparent header section with two region blocks, so I manually add those to regions.tpl.php, style.css and the theme.info file. I also have to write DIV for the USER blocks because Artisteers only puts placeholders into the php file (pages I think , not regions): I have to remove block from block formatting in block.tpl.php - there IS a lot of work! But I'm addicted to the initial ease of graphically laying out the theme, even though it's a lot of work.
There IS possibly a performance drawback with Artisteer themes- they end up fairly complex. (that's just me trying to pretend I'm not as horribly off-topic as a really am).
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Overal thank you and Artisteer (a bit off topic- sorry)
First of all you blow me away with our complete coverage of this event. :) Bravo! Your response is like a future meth addict in the first ten minutes of the second time he ever did it. When he's still handsome and gains the brief benefits of a future debilitating addiction. Awesome.
Are you saying that without Varnish and memcache, as definite participants, I should just ignore Pressflow?
Artisteer is limited in especially one area- you cannot define regions! I've had to go in and define my own regions but anyone who is worth their salt as a drupal developer is constantly digging into style.css and all of the .info and tpl.php files, as if it's simply expected.
Actually, we have yet to see a Drupal template tool that really defines regions AND fully styles pages, right. When I add it all up in my head, really, Artisteer simplifies a HELL of a lot for me.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
* overall with two Ls
My Macbook has a weird flat keyboard
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
A bit off topic as well.
Well Jake is working on an user interface for Omega that would add regions on the fly: http://himerus.com/blog/himerus/drupalcampma-grid-theming-session ...where you can skip ahead to 35:00 to see his roadmap for omega.
I've been impressed with the people working on drupal, there is a lot of talent. Personally though, one thing I dislike about drupal is the gnu license. I prefer a MIT or similar license. If drupal had a roadmap for switching to node.js as the primary language and inclusion of cubrid as a database (a bit of a hybrid between mysql and postgresql), it would make me happy for awhile. Because I think CMSs are interesting, I thought about making a node.js CMS. =) Gwan.com is supposed to come out with a top of the class key value implementation next week, but it's hard to say which direction that project will go. I prefer to stick with nginx for now with the greater number of modules that it has. I'm using postgresql, so Pressflow was not an option for my personal sites. A MVCC database (postgresql, cubrid, among others) doesn't have certain concurrency performance issues, but it's really not a factor until really high traffic is achieved. Cubrid also has a form of query caching, but has no license limitations, unlike DB2. Cubrid also recently started support for Joomla. Pressflow has contributed a lot to drupal, but mysql never grew on me, even though query caching is more useful for a cms like drupal. There's pros and cons to postgresql over mysql, but they both have taken care of a variety of deficiencies. So the support of only mysql, and since management time affects productivity the most, managing overhead in terms of a functionality cost = roi metric viewpoint is the best I can see it for now. The answer is, if Pressflow works out of the box and is faster than stock drupal, then there is no reason to ignore it, unless you want to work with D7 modules, database support is a concern, you have a strong dislike for overhead, or if you want to stick to the basics at first in terms of learning and support. Mr. Strauss has done work for some highly trafficked sites, so you should take in mind that there is a lot of room depending on the market you are seeking, to exist with other players. I have no idea what Pressflow support is like for D7 modules.
My background is in procurement, so product/service/cost analysis is in my blood now. I'm keeping tabs on where all this technology is taking people. If you want to start with the pessimistic viewpoint, then you will keep in mind what one analyst on bloomberg said, which is that the internet is a big deflationary device, i.e. it causes a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Opposing arguments can be made when traders buy up commodities, and it can be said that technology can be used to make both arguments a wash. I also see it is a multiplier of market forces, and my current interest with technology is to increase wages and do charity work. I have many goals, so for the short term, I'm trying to learn theming, and then module development next. =)
Anyway, I'm sticking with drupal for awhile, and all that mentioned above requires processing power and coding... which brings to mind that D8 plans are up for discussion.
Clarification on Pressflow
@vividgates:
Pressflow doesn't require additional infrastructure -- memcache, varnish, etc. -- any more than Drupal does.
http://fourkitchens.com/pressflow-makes-drupal-scale
Pressflow is a variant of Drupal that includes, among other things, PHP 5-specific and MySQL-specific code optimizations. You don't need to stand up any other services to deploy Pressflow -- simply install as you would the same Drupal 6 release, or write over an existing D6 install with Pressflow. It's easy enough to run the same app on the same numbered release of D6 and PF6 to get some performance numbers. You can make your choice from there.
If you do decide to take advantage of additional infrastructure -- for instance, master/slave MySQL instances, Varnish or other external cache -- you may find PF6 or D7 a necessity.
Thanks for the clarification.
Thanks for the clarification. My understanding is that most people who use pressflow will use varnish and memcache to get the most out of pressflow.
Pressflow...
Does Pressflow need to be installed FULLY?
I'm asking because I heard that you can just maybe install PARTS of Pressflow to replace the slowest Drupal PHP weighed down by non-MySQL code.
Also, @mshmsh5000 - do you mean I could literally just drop the Pressflow files on top of my 6.20 Drupal install without serious repercussions and see a performance increase?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Replacing only parts with
Replacing only parts with Pressflow will cause a maintenance nightmare. What do you do when there's a security update? Just swap out the whole thing. It's far easier than the other tweaky things that you're trying to pull off.
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Does Pressflow
Well, it depends what you want out of Pressflow. I don't know where you heard that you can install part of Pressflow, but to me that sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth. The only exception I can think of is the CDN patch that Pressflow includes. If that's all you want then you can get that straight from the CDN project.
Just drop it in (on a sandbox!)
You don't want to try replacing parts of stock Drupal with parts of Pressflow. There are a lot of differences, and some are complex:
https://wiki.fourkitchens.com/display/PF/Comparison+-+Pressflow+versus+D...
The point of Pressflow is to be a drop-in replacement for core Drupal of the same version.
In a SANDBOX (!!!) clone of your site, try exactly what you say -- overwrite the D6.20 release with the PF6.20 release. A two-part blanket statement with significant possible exceptions: a. You will see improved performance at the very least for anonymous users; and b. You will not see compatibility issues with most major modules.
I didn't see a specific
I didn't see a specific budget amount in your post but I can tell you from personal experience that Servint is the best host that I have ever used. Rarely do I have to wait more than 15 minutes for a reply to a question and their servers have never been down during the past four years that I have used them.
Perhaps the best part though is that they have two locations to choose from: LA and D.C. Since my sites are primarily targeted at China, I set up my VPS in LA and the speed difference is actually quite noticeable.
And, your mysql databased will be hosted on the same server so it's great for Drupal or other database - driven sites. Here is one of my sites that runs on Servint (www.chataboutchina.com)
Their lowest plans starts at around 50 bucks a month. I know that they recently doubled the bandwidth and storage that you get. Look them up. Servint.net
I only used GoDaddy a couple of times and I hate the clutter! Just put GoDaddy into Google and you will come up reviews (and perhaps entire websites) about their poor service.
mysql and hosting on different servers
It hardly has ever occurred to me that the mysql database and actual hosted files might be on different servers. Is this the NORM?
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Thanks Mr.... I haven't
Thanks Mr.... I haven't received any response yet with regard to budget. SONC has actually been trying to get hosting donated by this one company but seems to not be hearing back from them (I'm just not sure)... So I'm trying to find out more about other hosting optons, and I'm assuming that there's no huge budget. But the site will probably host more data than I initially expected, since there are 13K volunteers and 10K athletes in NorCal... I'm just unclear on it. I'm not even sure yet how much disk space they will need when all is said and done.
If I approach them confidently with definite reasons why they would need one type of hosting over another, they might push for that hosting to be budgeted.
Clearly a memcached Pressflow implmentation behind Varnish on a VPS would be BETTER than Go Daddy/GoDaddy shared hosting, while also costing more and needing more maintenance. I'm still unclear what we will HAVE to have, but part of it is that I haven't yet been able to really see historical stats, except at Compete.com and Quantcast, and those sites don't record TRUE site visit data, but an interpretation based on Nielsen families. Their numbers for January, for example, are completely wrong. And the December and January numbers are inflated because the developer teams and consultants have been repeatedly visiting the site to help assess and design the new site.
I'm pretty sure they'd at least initially balk at $50 per month when they've been hoping for donated.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
get Pantheon
Hey,
why dont you try Pantheon. They are still in Beta i guess but do have some production sites already running. Try getting in touch with them.. and you might be able to strike a good deal..
Cheers
rajarju
I work for Advomatic, and I
I work for Advomatic, and I felt obliged to mention our services since hosting for non-profits is a very big part of what we do.
At Advomatic we've just re-branded our VPS line:
https://www.getcadre.com/
This is managed hosting - so the packages basically come with sysadmins who are well versed with Drupal's server requirements. If you are comparing VPSes be sure to take that into consideration. We also offer all the services included in Pantheon for an additional cost. So it's very easy to scale up if necessary.
Plus you have access to Drupal & CiviCRM knowledge and development via our Drupal Maintenance plans:
http://www.advomatic.com/services/drupal-maintenance
--
Dave Hansen-Lange
Director of Technical Strategy, Advomatic.com
Pronouns: he/him/his
Thanks, and decision for now - webfaction
Thanks everyone. We're going to TRY WEBFACTION for now. It gives us dedicated memory and we're adding 40mb to have 120mb and we're going to have a dedicated IP and memcached will be used. I'm also considering using a Pressflow release, not sure if that's taking a risk of asking for bugginess. Pantheon seems to not yet have an active release so I'd hardly dare use it yet.
My last question would be, is it any issue that webfaction uses the FastCGI version of PHP? Because it seemed that GoDaddy moved away from that for some reason?
Thanks again for all of the advice. I'm sure someday I'll enter the world of Varnish and VPS, but not yet.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Running PHP under FastCGI
Running PHP under FastCGI instead of as an Apache module is a trade-off that some hosts do. When running under FastCGI, if something causes PHP to crash, there's less of a chance that Apache will be affected. However, running it as an Apache module is faster - the difference will likely be immeasurable for most sites, but when you're doing stuff at Go Daddy's scale, they likely see the benefit.
It could also be the case, though somewhat unlikely, that WebFaction is using a web server other than Apache (IIS, nginx, LightTPD, etc), in which case Apache modules are obviously not an option for them.
The Boise Drupal Guy!
webfaction uses apache but
webfaction uses apache but the problem (rarely) is nginx (which is in front of apache), sometimes nginx has problems and they fix it quick (matter of 1-2 minutes)
Nice discussion. Could you
Nice discussion. Could you give us a review of how your host has been? I've been especially concerned about shared-hosting speed for Drupal 7. Thanks!
Webfaction- SO FAR
Well, we're practically building a VPS over there because we have needed to build our own "php stack" into order to install APC or a version of memcached that supports access via socket. I was WAY bummed to learn that though that have memcached installed, they don't have a version that supports sockets- it's ridiculous because in a shared server environment, open a port to listen on 127.0.0.1 is a HUGE security risk. So it's like they really DON'T have memcached.
So far we have the php stack up, tried to install APC, it completely crashes the shell that attempts to start it- we have eAccelerator running with no problem, it seems to help. We are hoping to finish installing APC and then install BOOST.
I've wanted to use NGINX more for static files, but the problem is that it causes URL recursion when you use it via the "static only app" method that is available at Webfaction. So Neerav in support pointed me to the CDN "Content Delivery System" Drupal module and I haven't had the chance to work out howe to get that to work yet and test whether it WILL work.
Performance HAS been a real concern, but more from the admin side. From the site "regular page" side, for visitors, pages seem to load RATHEr normally, though not super duper instantly. It's not BAD, and from long discussions with people I've not gained a clear sense of how much more benefit we'll get from a VPS, and that will be a lot more work or money, right?
I've been using the Devel logger to show slow MySQL reads and there has seemed to be a lot of sloth with get_cache and set_cache. What's that about?
As soon as APC and boost are working (I hope we can get it to work), and I actually test optimizing/aggregating the Javascripts and CSS, I'll have a better sense of whether we need to leave webfaction.
Webfaction support goes like this: Neerav is helpful and replies quickly but sometimes doesn't provide enough information. Tim G is a bit snarky and will sometimes provide risky recommendations and takes all day to reply to us. Sean F works really hard to be helpful and thorough.
I can tell you that it takes a long time to save the module list configuration and to save Views, and if I run the Admin Menu, which I like- if I do, then performance drops for me.
I'll update more later.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com
Wow, thanks for the detailed
Wow, thanks for the detailed response. That's interesting they'd let you do all that on shared hosting. By the way, I've been researching managed VPS the last several days; from what I've found so far, KnownHost and Servint appear good for reputations for good help and solid hosting, along with competitive pricing.
I wanted to second opinion
I wanted to second opinion about GoDaddy - stay away from it if possible.
If You don't want to support and set up everything on Your own I suggest sticking with Drupal Gardens.
Drupal Gardens?
The nice Acquia employee above mentioned Drupal Gardens to me also but when I visited the Acquia site it wasn't clear to me how it was going to be any better than normal shared hosting. Maybe either you or him can explain why it's a safe option? This web site is going to be too big and important to get it wrong. And we can't have any Drupal Gardens advertising on the site, even if we appreciate them for allowing the hosting.
And trust me, the depth of LOATHING for Go Daddy on this Drupal High Performance group page left me with no ability at all to get any respect from anyone if I even considered them. It's weird that they're so deeply hated when I've never had a problem with them, but then again, this is the largest site I'll be helping to get developed so far, so I haven't been able to truly put Go Daddy performance to the test.
MIKO, Creative Technical Support and Developer
Miko's Support and Design Services, Seattle
http://mikosweb.com