Speeding Up Joomla! a little bit

Sunday, 28 January 2007 18:09

Since my server is still suffering, Ive decide today to take some actions.

user: changes can be done on shared hosting with limited user rights.
root. changes require a full access to the server (root access with secure shell ssh)

I have currently per months, 160.000 visitors and 2 Millions Hits.or per day 8000 visitors and 24000 pages view.
Server has only 1GB RAM.

UPDATE: I found one/THE reason why my host is slowing down...SPAMMERS!

click read more

user:

Joomla! settings

I switch enable gzip compression OFF. Since this is meant to reduce the usage of bandwidth, not the load on my server. The server has to encode all the files in order to send them, which only puts additional load on your page.
I switch Joomla!! statistics off, as AWSTATS is providing a much better job.

user: MySQL maintenance

I Optimize (repair, refresh statistics) MySQL tables through MySQL admin, but It can be done through PLESK

user: Tune Joomla!! cache

I Increase Joomla! cache lifetime from 900seconds to 24 hours as it better reflect the way I update my site (daily)

user:

keep pages small

Reduce size of banner, using GIMP so they are using a web palette, most of them were shrink from 40kb to 7kb
I remove all un-needed space from the main templates file (index.php), an action which will help first users visitors only.
Attention, it is a never ending task...

user: Hunting software bugs
By switching the site to debug mode, I notice some nasty queries (select count(*) from), all created by my statistics module ( Content Statistics on right side), In fact Joomla!! module do not inherit from Joomla!! cache automatically. I fix value in this module since I do not want to program cache support in it right now.

root

One more cache

I decide to install a PHP accelerator: PHPA from http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/
" The ionCube PHP Accelerator is an easily installed PHP Zend engine extension that provides a PHP cache, and is capable of delivering a substantial acceleration of PHP scripts without requiring any script changes, loss of dynamic content, or other application compromises."

Install is straightforward: just copy library into /usr/local/lib/php_accelerator_1.3.3r2.so
and add these lines to /etc/php.ini

; PHP Accelerator extension
zend_extension="/usr/local/lib/php_accelerator_1.3.3r2.so"

phpa = on
phpa.c0_size = 64
phpa.cache_dir = /tmp
phpa.c0_logging = on


;The shm_stats_check_period is the minimum interval between checks of the 
;cache for expired scripts. The first server request after the interval has
;elapsed will trigger a scan of the cache for expired scripts, and remove
;any entries that it finds.
phpa.c0_stats_check_period = 5m

;The shm_ttl value is the value used to set the 
;time-to-expiry value when a script is accessed. Put another way, the shm_ttl
;value is the period after which an unaccessed script expires.
phpa.c0_ttl = 12h

;phpa.ignore_files = ""
;phpa.ignore_dirs = ""

I use that tool: HTTP Viewer to check if my page now contains a header X-Accelerated-By:·PHPA/1.3.3r2

Reduce surface of attack: I found my components that were not used by Joomla! (very old code and uused components . So go through all directories with FTp/SCP and remove any un-needed code....

Review table data directly in the database...
This is how I found 27 000 spams in my gallery (Zoom gallery)
solution:

I remove all entries
Disallow comments operations (in Zoom gallery admin panel),

but spammers were still able to insert comments, so I edit the file components/com_zoom/lib/image.class.php
//add because of spammers
header("HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden");
//$database->setQuery("INSERT INTO #__zoom_comments (imgid,cmtname,cmtcontent,cmtdate) VALUES ('".mysql_escape_str

Note: I recommend You to use also mod_evasive and mod_security (root access needed), see aprevious article on my site

Some links, where I borrow some ideas:

http://www.primakoala.com/tutorials/guides/speeding_up_joomla.html
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,50278.0.html
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,54175.0.html

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Not good enough

c2h5oh (82.210.164.xxx) 2007-01-28 21:05:04

Drop ioncube - use xcache or apc and fine tune it for max performance.
Have a
look at my.cnf and tune it to maximize mysql performance.
Have a look at
apache.conf/httpd.conf and select mpm_worker, tune # threads / requests per
thread for optimum performacne (the later should be 3000-6000), tune no of keep
alives, lower keep alive timeout to 1-4s.
Or stop using apache and use lighttpd
with php running via fastCGI.

I'm currently running a number of joomla based
sites on 2 dedicated servers (one Pentium4, 1gb ram handling 20000-25000 unique
visitors per day with average of 370 000 requests per day, and Athlon64, 2gb ram
with 40000+ uu) so I do know there is still much you can improve.
Feel free to
email me or send me a pm via your forums (same nick) if you need any help.

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Newby-thanks for tips

Pat Startz (216.45.81.xxx) 2008-05-02 21:53:53

New to Joomla,

I added the image rotator and place 33 pictures in it, then
placed 13 pictures in the gallery for the front page to show off Seniors and our
new school site. It was so slow I had to remove "eye candy"--Very
upset--A quick set of How to steps for improving server speed for Joomla would
be much appreciated.