Question about how to speed up my site

[SusanN]

Hello!

I've read quite a few threads on this topic, but I am still lost.  I think I need some hand holding here.  At least to get started...  Anyway, I've read a lot about page caching and how it helps speed up the site, but I have no idea how to implement it.  And are there other techniques?  I think my site is way too slow.  I will need things spelled out pretty clearly until I get the hang of this.

I'm using version 1.2.3

pla yma nia ta mpa.com

Thanks!

[cb2004]

One of the best speed improvements you will get is not using the {stylesheet} tag. Just link to a css file in a folder on your server. You will notice the speed improvement straight away.

[SusanN]

Thanks for your reply.  I learned that one yesterday.  I removed {stylesheet} right away. 

[cubix]

how long does your site take to generate? (check the last lines in the html once generated)

i have found most people with speed problems can link it back to having shared hosting with an overloaded mysql server.

[SusanN]

This is what it says:

Generated in 6.960763 seconds by CMS Made Simple using 15 SQL queries

Is there anything I can do?  We're hosted with midPhase on a shared plan.

[nivekiam]

I've dug into your situation a little bit.  I don't have a good answer for you, but this may give you something to chew on.  Sorry if this is off topic, but I think my observations can ultimately be of help in your situation.

Your site (I got the address from your css file) is hosted with anhosting.com and the site you are working on is hosted with midphase.com.  Both buy/rent/etc servers/space/bandwidth from SingleHop.  Your site, while still a little slow IMO, loads much, much faster than the site you are currently working on.

My opinion, Midphase has over sold their service and needs to buy some upgrades from SingleHop.  At the very least they've over sold that server you are on or they have one or two abusive customers and don't have the competency to find and fix the problem.

A decent host would be notified automatically of performance issues on their servers and have someone watching and fixing the problem.

First I would contact them and see what can be done about the abysmal performance.  If they can't move you to a different server or improve things, then, I would change hosts.  There are too many to choose from, even the company you are hosting with who has rents space and bandwidth from the same company Midphase does handles their servers better.

This is just me, but I also won't use a host who doesn't own their own infrastructure, servers, facility, internet connections, backup systems, etc.

The host I use, while not in the $10/month (or less) bucket of cheap hosts, manages 2 data centers, over 1500 servers, delivers over 3TB of data every day, hosts very popular sites that are regularly posted to slashdot and similar sites and just keep on ticking, never going down Toms Hardware.  They also mirror several very popular open source projects, donating space and bandwidth.

This is not a sales pitch for my host, I don't care if you switch or use them or not.  They are not the cheapest host out there, but they are rock solid and reliable.  There are others out there that are cheaper that are decent and mostly reliable, but in my 10 years of experience and going down the cheap host path, you really do get what you pay for.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think you can spend a lot of time tweaking CMSms (or any database driven site) at that host and you won't be gaining much of anything.  That is unless they can fix their underlying problem.

[cubix]

well said nivekiam.

[SusanN]

I see what you're saying.  Thanks for the information.  I am interested to know who your host is.  I didn't catch your hint, obviously, because when I googled, I didn't find a host with that name.