In the fond hope of avoiding server meltdowns like we’ve experienced over the last few days, your host has integrated a caching feature in the back end. Theoretically, users that have made comments – the minority, I’m led to believe – will see no changes, while the majority will be served static files rather than invoking php scripts that cause the database to creak under the load.
We’ll see. In the meantime, please feel free to provide feedback if you notice any adverse behavior.
Like any of the regulars have been shy about that in the past…
Update: It’s far from clear that cache feature helped, and it’s been disabled. Meanwhile, I’ve got one of the finest free-for-service geniuses working with me in the background.
Looks fine to me.
“Like any of the regulars have been shy about that in the past…” Made me laugh out loud. I’ve had to bite my fingers a few times the last couple of days to keep from sending you an e-mail. Reason prevailed, though. I knew someone else would.
LOL. Moi? I refrained. I figure you already had enough grief…..
Ha! My thoughts exactly. After all, Mr. Lex has soooo many friends willing to give advice, solicited or not, on just about anything!
First time it’s worked in 2 days, for me. . .
What a relief, Lex. I thought it was my dumb new computer and new router that were doing all this. I just told my computer guy that I was divorcing my husband’s router for good, and getting my own modem, even if it’s more expensive. [Not divorcing my husband, you understand, just his bloody router. He can stay, if he behaves. The router can't -- and no more of this networking nonsense.] Time and again I’ve seen that the more complex technology gets, the more apt it is to get screwed up. And I’m on a short clock here — at least, shorter than you guys are. So I’m less patient with stupid behavior and prolly a little more cranky than I used to be.
Y’all wait. You will be too, eventually.
Marianne
Skipper,
Since the tech-world has gone summat flat these days, an’ if your looking, these guys have been
goodgreat at what they do for a couple of decades now. Good web delivery, the geeks all take skateboard breaks (which is a good sign), and a ton of redundancy and bandwidth to make the world go ’round…oh, and database support. You might like that.Lex,
Don’t know if this will help or not, but last week while I was on your site, I got about half a dozen instances of Firefox shutting down and telling me something along the lines of “Firefox has experienced an unexpected shutdown and will try to restart.” I figured that it might have had something to do with my recent upgrades to Firefox 3.5 and then 3.5.1 and let it go at that. It was strange that it only happened while on your site.
Then starting this Monday and continuing into Tuesday when I tried to access your site I got numerous 404 errors — cannot locate URL or some variation on that theme. Figured you were overloaded.
Today has been perfect.
All of this confuses the heck out of me, but I sure hope it might be of some use to you. I’ll apologize in advance if all it does is add more confusion. Just trying to help you sort out what might be (or was) going on.
So, King Neptune, this is an invitation for your kangaroo court (“users that have made comments”) to spout off more? “Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war!”
Hi again, Lex.
I will have some unsolicited advice for you re: caching in the next day or two, but if you want to share with me (via email) more info about these meltdowns (I almost exclusively read your site in an RSS aggregator so rarely (never) have had a bad experience visiting it), I can perhaps provide some insight that may be helpful in making these meltdowns go away forever (without using WP plugins).
Best,
Raoul
Interestingly enough, when I tried implementing a cache (using the same plugin) my host (your host I believe 2x or so back) puked all over that (and any caching plan) and threatened to pull the plug. Might have to take a look at Mongo’s recommendation a bit closer as we reach the end of current service period…
- SJS
Hmmm….
never had a problem.
I’ve been using versions of this caching plugin for years. I’m surprised you’ve been able to blog without it. I’m on an inexpensive shared-server plan that permits only a small number of simultaneous DB connections, and this plugin is the only way to keep my blog from bogging down during traffic spikes.
The latest version of the plugin is well debugged but it may still have some quirks. Every once in a while my blog doesn’t display properly, or WordPress does something weird, and usually when I look it turns out that there’s a large number of cached pages. In these cases clearing the cache manually almost always resolves the problem, so it’s a good first step if your blog starts acting up.
No complaints from here. When I had a couple of comments get moderated, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t owe someone an apology.
Henry Allingham, the oldest surviving veteran from the Great War was buried today, the funeral having significant coverage in the UK, partly I suppose because so many other British soldiers have been buried recently.
I also posted on Mr Bing’s article and think he was mostly correct though sealing the Afghan – Pakistan border should be a priority, some of the buggers turning up are wearing Aston Villa shirts (an English football team).
The Daily Politics.
PS Comment section shrinks horribly compared to the rest of the blog when resizing the window.
Hey, the only problem I’m having these days is that since you switched servers, I occasionally get a black screen with a really scary pop-up that claims to be from Microsoft saying that if I don’t turn on their crappy security stuff my computer will be destroyed. I hit Escape and it goes away, so it’s only mildly annoying.
Aside from a couple of heart-stoppages when the site wouldn’t come up – what was an east coast girl to do?! – all looks well here. We know you’re on it – cuz you love us that much. icsfth
I thought all the caching plug-in (I use WP-Cache) did was build an HTML page using all the WordPress PHP pieces (header.php, footer.php, post.php, etc.) and save or cache it. Having the cached version allows your site to fling the finished product at a user instead of building each page piece by piece every time its accessed. Can’t imagine why an ISP would have heartburn over that. Seems like it would help them. Mine (Dreamhost) in fact, encourages it.
Nor do I understand why anyone would see any difference in what is presented to them. The time to build a page, in human terms, is imperceptible. In aggregate, on a a busy site, the load on the server is lighter without all the PHP scripts running building pages. It becomes a simple file retrieval job instead of a processor intensive script job. At least that’s how I understand it.
Given that I run four WP sites (none as busy as this one, to be sure), if anyone can shed some light on this I’d sure appreciate it, and I suspect Hisself would as well.
http://undress4success.com
http://UndressForSuccessOnline.com
http://findingmoneyadvice.com
http://encoreadventures.com
I would be curious to see what your stats are that are puking the system. I don’t do much WP (OK, next to zero) but I do manage a mid size vBulletin forum (700K posts, > 500MB mysql DB no inclusing attachments, > 60GB /month bandwidth on one site alone) with a ton of Joomla sites, all database driven, with nary a problem. But I have a dedicated server.
Not sure what your monthly hosting costs (and budget) are but a good Virtual Private Server shouldn’t be too much and will give you what you need. Sharing a server with 4000 non-friends stinks.
Lex;
It’s been hard. A beginning a day without Lex is gonna be a day without sunshine.
Stop skylarking, and fix the damn thing.
FWIW… I received a database connection error yesterday sometime between 1300-1400 hrs MDT.