Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#1

Post by jalada » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 12:43 PM UTC

Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)
jalada.co.uk

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#2

Post by fat_tony » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 1:00 PM UTC

There is an even easier way. Use nginx.

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#3

Post by jalada » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 1:02 PM UTC

fat_tony wrote: post #2

There is an even easier way. Use nginx.

Agreed, nginx is nice (I'm using it to serve static content on my blog in front of Apache). But nginx requires additional setup with WordPress to get it working properly, in particular mod_rewrite rules (especially if you then use WP Super Cache, or at least that's what it was like on Lighttpd when I used to use that).

I don't consider WordPress to be server agnostic - it's built for Apache and it only works well on IIS because Microsoft made some effort to make it happen.

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#4

Post by _pdeschen » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 2:02 PM UTC

jalada wrote: post #3

fat_tony wrote: post #2

There is an even easier way. Use nginx.

Agreed, nginx is nice (I'm using it to serve static content on my blog in front of Apache). But nginx requires additional setup with WordPress to get it working properly, in particular mod_rewrite rules (especially if you then use WP Super Cache, or at least that's what it was like on Lighttpd when I used to use that). I don't consider WordPress to be server agnostic - it's built for Apache and it only works well on…

Agree. I had to optimize my wordpress installation recently including some caching. Since there is not that much information about nginx, I took some notes and wrote about it. Here is my blog post:

http://blog.rassemblr.com/2011/01/wordpress-need-for-speed-o...

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#5

Post by jalada » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

_pdeschen wrote: post #4

jalada wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, nginx is nice (I'm using it to serve static content on my blog in front of Apache). But nginx requires additional setup with WordPress to get it working properly, in particular mod_rewrite rules (especially if you then use WP Super Cache, or at least that's what it was like on Lighttpd when I used to use that). I don't consider WordPress to be server agnostic - it's built for Apache and it only works well on…

Agree. I had to optimize my wordpress installation recently including some caching. Since there is not that much information about nginx, I took some notes and wrote about it. Here is my blog post: http://blog.rassemblr.com/2011/01/wordpress-need-for-speed-o...

Nice resource, I'll update my post with a link to that.

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#6

Post by ICanDoMore » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 3:04 PM UTC

What about Varnish?

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#7

Post by Sukotto » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 3:37 PM UTC

_pdeschen wrote: post #4

jalada wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, nginx is nice (I'm using it to serve static content on my blog in front of Apache). But nginx requires additional setup with WordPress to get it working properly, in particular mod_rewrite rules (especially if you then use WP Super Cache, or at least that's what it was like on Lighttpd when I used to use that). I don't consider WordPress to be server agnostic - it's built for Apache and it only works well on…

Agree. I had to optimize my wordpress installation recently including some caching. Since there is not that much information about nginx, I took some notes and wrote about it. Here is my blog post: http://blog.rassemblr.com/2011/01/wordpress-need-for-speed-o...

There's also this post from patio11 that, amongst other things, describes what he does to use nginx + wordpress.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/22/using-wordpress-and-rail...

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#8

Post by jalada » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 3:50 PM UTC

ICanDoMore wrote: post #6

What about Varnish?

WordPress is very cookie heavy. I don't think Varnish OTB would work in front of it. Sure you might be able to configure it to work, but that's probably more effort than just tweaking a few lines of Apache.

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#9

Post by sabat » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 3:54 PM UTC

Rather than fuss over Apache settings, use some decent caching strategies and you won't need to worry about this at all. And BTW, nginx is not always faster than Apache, and not always the best choice for any app.

Re: Bring down a poorly deployed WordPress (and how to stop it from happening)

#10

Post by jalada » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 4:00 PM UTC

sabat wrote: post #9

Rather than fuss over Apache settings, use some decent caching strategies and you won't need to worry about this at all. And BTW, nginx is not always faster than Apache, and not always the best choice for any app.

True, and true. The main issue with caching WordPress is that WordPress itself is very dynamic and full of cookies, WordPress has plenty of caching plugins available but as I point out, that wont help you against Apache spawning tens of processes and eating all your RAM.

So therefore you're down to external caching, which is another layer of complexity and detrimental to anything dynamic you have on your blog (which is pretty common).