Yes, the Site is Slow
I have a horrible, awful, embarrassing confession. All my sites, including this blog, are run off of super-cheap shared hosting accounts at Godaddy (yes, the guys with the juvenile commercials). For years I think they did a decent job and my sites were not that busy, so it was no problem. But as with most large, cheap hosting companies, they seem to be cramming more and more domains on each shared server. Someone on this server is chewing up a lot of CPU cycles and it's time to move on.
I have switched to a virtual private server account at a new hosting company, as a sort of stepping stone potentially to a dedicated server (my business and I have over 30 web sites so it probably can be justified). The VPS account is cheaper and lets me start learning some new things about managing hosting (e.g. I have access to the root for the first time) but still shields me from some of the server management (e.g. OS updates). And it's cheaper than a dedicated server, so we will see how it goes.
At some point, not quite yet, the site will have some down time when I do the migration. Not sure yet when that will be -- the wordpress database for this site is over 50mb which exceeds the import file size allowed in my data base tools (phpmyadmin for mysql). I have read there is another way to do it, I just have to do some research and tests first. I probably will have to learn to work the data base from the command line.
JSmoke:
There's myriad ways to move a MySQL database, but you might try this one first as its quick to try. Look under "Restoring a Dump"
http://www.keithjbrown.co.uk/vworks/mysql/mysql_p6.php
December 9, 2010, 12:20 pmMaurilius:
I recently moved to a VPS and it was like being let out of prison. I'm delighted with the result and with not having many little restrictions on what I can do with my server.
If you have access to a Mac, check out the free Sequel Pro app. It makes direct access to the database a breeze; I export and import large databases across servers with no problem.
(Feel free to email me if my experience might be of assistance.)
December 9, 2010, 12:59 pmJay:
I'm surprised! Everyone I've known of being hosted by GoDaddy has been super slow, even with less size and traffic. I never noticed this place seeming inordinately sluggish.
December 9, 2010, 4:05 pmBill:
I recommend orcsweb.com as an excellent hosting company if you haven't finished comparing potential hosts. I do some hosting with them (although my site is out of date)
December 9, 2010, 10:34 pmcolson:
It has been a while since I've done an import but if memory serves, the problem with using PHPMyAdmin has to do with the memory allocation and maximum file size that PHP is set up to handle. Now is this 50mb compressed or uncompressed? PHPMyAdmin allows you to use upload a zip file which might help (probably not much though with a file that size). If not, just upload the backup to the new server and run the following:
mysql --user=username --password=password < MyDatabaseBackup.sql
The only thing I haven't really liked about GoDaddy comes from their shared hosting configuration; at least up to about a year or more ago when I last had to deal with them. They had been using a SSL proxy which made it a pain to deal with when doing ecommerce work as it almost always required some custom code tweaking just to get it to work with most out-of-the-box PHP solutions. With every other hosting provider you just set a few configuration variables and you were off and running.
December 10, 2010, 9:36 amDan:
The RSS feed really hasn't been working since the "Incredible Bread Machine" post. I thought it would work itself out, but figured I should post since others must have seen this as well.
December 10, 2010, 11:42 amDan:
Correction - it is not working in Yahoo. It works in igoogle. Perhaps I should check with Yahoo.
December 10, 2010, 11:43 amdwall:
Forgot, Democrats are gone. Now some kind of Soros OSI marxists aka Bolivian Revolution. Morales repeated Soros and Chavez this weekend and said the problem with the earth's environment is Capitalism.
December 12, 2010, 1:05 pm