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My experience with WPEngine

chester.id.au

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Re: My experience with WPEngine

#101

Post by dotBen »

alexandros wrote: post #4

For all who are thinking about moving to WPEngine: Your staging server does not use WPE's caching technology, which your production server will use. WPE will not give you details on how their secret-sauce caching works. This means that things that work on staging will break on production. WPE also refuse to turn off their caching on production, but also refuse to turn ON their caching on your staging server. This mea…

So we don't apply the caching stuff to the staging server because the purpose of the staging server is to stage content and test new plugins and themes.

We invented this feature in response to bloggers and site owners who wanted to be able to test a new plugin before adding it to the live/production version of their site. We're also the only managed WP platform to offer such a feature as standard with all accounts.

I can see that in a true dev/staging/production test suite environment, it does't stand up as a true mirror of product for the reasons you stated - but then neither does the staging/local version of Google App Engine or Heroku offer the same exact environment of their production platform.

If you need true like-for-like mirroring of production and staging, then yes, you need to create another WordPress instance - that's the case for most providers. Also its wroth nothing all WP Engine accounts, other than the Personal plan, come with multiple WordPress instances, so rarely that means actually buying anything further.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#102

Post by jacques_chester »

dotBen wrote: post #97

Ben, one of the co-founders of WP Engine here and as someone wrote below[1] - yes, this isn't the most wonderful thing to wake up to in the morning and sort out while still in your PJ's ;) Ok, so first and foremost I am incredibly sorry, Jacques, for the experience you had. I can say with confidence that your experience with WP Engine is out of the ordinary, but no excuses. I’m writing this as a way of owning up to m…

Thanks, Ben.

FYI, the problem is with the Recent Comments widget code that ships in the Wordpress base install. Page.ly had the same database connection dropping issues you did and I presume for the same reason. (edit: By the way, use the db-error.php facility to put up nicer error pages. It's also a really obvious point to insert some monitoring logic -- I think customers would like it if you noticed their problems before they do).

The core issue, as I said elsewhere in this thread, is that unless you partition the underlying wp_comment tables, performance becomes steadily worse as the total number of comments rises.

The only reason that this was never a problem for me on my own servers is that I am loltastically over-provisioned for my requirements. I just never saw it.

You will see it more in future. Like I said: this is not a badly behaved 3rd-party plugin. This is mainline code. Your customers can reasonably expect that you can run Wordpress out of the box without degradation.

None of changes the fact that my original migration experience was a total disaster. I know you're experiencing growing pains.

Well here's one of them. I hope it serves you and your future customers well.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#103

Post by kaizendc »

jacques_chester wrote: post #89
stevenkovar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit distasteful to publicly attack a popular service, then try to siphon the traffic their name generates to your "bloggers."

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But what I said is true. It's a shame that out of all the things that every site on Ozblogistan has ever posted, this is the one that made the HN front page. There are far better posts than mine in those blogs. Is it wrong for me to be proud of them?

If you are so proud of them, continue to submit them as single links to HN.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#104

Post by dotBen »

ck2 wrote: post #42

WPEngine uses NFS/NAS which is a show-stopper. Dreamhost has the same issue, and GoDaddy (still?) You never, ever, use NFS on something with hundreds of files to load for every page (ie. WordPress). Every file takes 2-2.5ms to stat/load on NFS ( from my tests on WPengine ) which seems small but adds up fast. It means you instantly have 700ms or more of overhead on the SERVER side to render a page (not transmit to the…

There's a fair amount of criticism flying around about us on this thread, but that's one I can't make any apologies over.

There's all sorts of interesting things we're doing with NFS, along with caching layers, that ensure this is never a bottleneck -- and even provides benefits in other ways.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#105

Post by [deleted] »

jacques_chester wrote: post #86
csomar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are the OP. I won't argue with you much. I'm in the WordPress business for many years. What I meant Page.ly is providing a generous support service to keep its' clients. This is a bad strategy because it makes wrong assumptions of what their main service is.

Yes, I guess they should focus more heavily on the terrible customer service market instead.

[deleted]

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#106

Post by jacques_chester »

kaizendc wrote: post #103
jacques_chester wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But what I said is true. It's a shame that out of all the things that every site on Ozblogistan has ever posted, this is the one that made the HN front page. There are far better posts than mine in those blogs. Is it wrong for me to be proud of them?

If you are so proud of them, continue to submit them as single links to HN.

I do. And I will.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#107

Post by jacques_chester »

ssharp wrote: post #99

There appears to be a huge gap (maybe sweet spot?) in WP hosting. The lower end is well covered by companies like WP Engine, Page.ly, and ZippyKid. The high end is covered by Wordpress.com. Somewhere in the middle, and probably closer to the low end, exists a need for less commoditized services to support more complex installations. It doesn't appear like WP Engine is really positioned or resourced to actually suppor…

Actually, I would characterise WPEngine, Page.ly and ZippyKid as mid-tier. The low end is served by thousands of shared hosts and resellers.

Look at the pricing: Wordpress VIP starts at $500; WPEngine is selling a $250 plan.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#108

Post by rmrfrmrf »

jacques_chester wrote: post #89
stevenkovar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit distasteful to publicly attack a popular service, then try to siphon the traffic their name generates to your "bloggers."

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. But what I said is true. It's a shame that out of all the things that every site on Ozblogistan has ever posted, this is the one that made the HN front page. There are far better posts than mine in those blogs. Is it wrong for me to be proud of them?

You're ignoring the fact that your post on WPEngine is actually relevant to this site, whereas only one of your promoted posts has anything to do with tech.

It's not wrong to be proud, but I have to agree that blatant advertising is distasteful no matter which way you slice it.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#110

Post by macspoofing »

jacques_chester wrote: post #86
csomar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are the OP. I won't argue with you much. I'm in the WordPress business for many years. What I meant Page.ly is providing a generous support service to keep its' clients. This is a bad strategy because it makes wrong assumptions of what their main service is.

Yes, I guess they should focus more heavily on the terrible customer service market instead.

No, what he means is that Page.ly went above and beyond what is reasonable for the price you're paying them. Yes, it was very nice of them, and most likely they did it because they are a young and hungry company. At the end of if all, I don't really get a sense from what you wrote that WPEngine service was terrible. It sounds like you were a difficult customer with difficult architectural issues that were ultimately the root cause of your performance issues.
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