joomla + dreamhost

howdy.

i've got a small hobby site with a few subdomains for tinkering. i 1-click installed joomla (sweet), and defaulted through most of the options. it is painfully slow. web is on schweppes, sql is on bodger:mlodzianowski, and i'm a crazy domain insane plan.

i never really got worked up over it. i figured my budget hosting got me on near capacity set of servers. i was just asked by a colleague if i knew of any super great web hosts for a new (SUPA-BIG) joomla site we're doing. it's a muni site, and is gonna get a bit of traffic.

so i guess my question(s) is/are this:
- is there something i should be doing to optimize the joomla/sql combo? it seemed to be the source of teh slow.
- can i confidently recommend dreamhost to him for a joomla powered site, and if so, should i tell him to go for the baller package to get the best resources?

thanks!

ps - if you're gonna flame about how horrid your experience is with DH, please don't waste your time. i'm not here for that. help me figure out how to optimize joomla/sql, or tell me that dreamhost + joomla isn't a good combination for a high traffic site.




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OMG DH SUCKS MOVE TO .... Alaska!!
...

For my joomla site (in my sig) I use eAccelerator to cache the pages which results in something like a 20-32% increase in loading speeds (depending on the content of course). I also heavily modified my theme so that it was a lot smaller. Ehhh.. an example of "making it smaller" would be compressing the css and javascript (js) files using a website like this one. Unfortunately the cluster I'm on is currently having a bit of an issue lately, so while I can't always say my website loads lightning fast, I can definitely say it DOES load that fast when the server/cluster are functioning properly

Also I should point out that, considering this is Joomla! which is inherently insecure, I added the 'Suhosin' PHP module just as an extra precaution to project my site from any potential script kiddie vandals.

well moving to alaska helped.

i just reinstalled joomla to start working on the demo site, and jebus, it's lightning fast. please, don't sneeze anywhere around the sql.

/loves DH

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As the websites I host become more complex I'm starting to think Dreamhost doesn't see itself as a place to host demanding sites.

After all it is really cheap hosting for something that's supposed to make money.

I'm very disappointed with the speeds of my Joomla site, but I have think I would have to pay more to have it running faster somewhere else.

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I dunno how many users/hits you get on your Joomla site, but if it's quite a lot, then you've definitely outgrown shared hosting and need to move to a VPS/Dedicated server.
You might also consider some other options, like using a caching mechanism (Joomla has a module/extension for this in fact) like eAccelerator or APC. Or perhaps tweaking your site to remove as much dynamic (PHP generated specifically) content as possible.

Anyways, with the little traffic I get on my Joomla site, it seems to load quickly enough to my satisfaction. It hovers between lightning fast (almost literally) and about 5-6 seconds of loading. I compressed all of the javascript and css files, used eAccelerator to cache most of my php pages, and I made sure not to use a lot of plugins. Images were also optimized in PNG format with the highest compression possible.

Did you install Joomla in a sub-directory? I am about to do the install (I am not fully awake yet) and I realized that it probably is not a good idea to have everything installed at the top level.

So, subdirectory for each program installed?

Seashore Trolley Museum
www.trolleymuseum.org
www.neerhs.org

Yah, that's how I went about it. After looking at the Joomla layout, I had some directories already in my root webdirectory that I didn't want to share with Joomla, so I went ahead and created a 'main' subdirectory for it.

You might want to note however, that it would seem some extensions don't work well with subdirectories. Mostly due to the poor coding "skills" of those who wrote the extensions. One such example is sh404SEF - of which I've already patched and plan to send the author(s) the details on how to fix their code.

Hello All,

I am shumisha, I develop sh404SEF. Mousee, I'd like to hear about any changes in the component needed to make it work in a sub-dir ? or maybe you were refering to other changes ?

Regards

Ya sorry I still haven't taken the time to email you the changes I've made. Give me some time, hopefully this weekend, and I'll go over and document what I changed to make it work. It wasn't anything major, really just some contextual errors in your code that are easily fixed.

Many thanks for the great extension as well!

Well, I was just curious to know what sort of problem you were facing using Joomla+sh404SEF in a subdir, considering the fact that many people do that, including myself, and this is more a htaccess issue than anything else. you don't have to provide fixed code, just general explanation should be oK

Well, it's great you have it working in a subdirectory, but I'm also redirecting anyone from the root directory (in this case, chipsncheese.com/ ) to a sub-directory (ie. chipsncheese.com/main/ ) which is inherently broken if your code is inconsistent, which it is.

One example would be as such:

sef404.php, line 22

In reply to:

---

require_once('components/com_sef/shCache.php');

---

(Which is the improper way to call it btw)
Later down on line 539 however, we have this:

In reply to:

---

require_once($GLOBALS['mosConfig_absolute_path']."/components/com_sef/sef_ext.php");

---

Which is the correct way to call it, via Joomla standards.
You *must* include the absolute path or else Joomla doesn't recognize the redirected sub-directory structure, not to mention it makes your code actually consistant.

Here's a fixed example of line 22 (note that $GLOBALS isn't required):

In reply to:

---

require_once( $mosConfig_absolute_path .'/components/com_sef/shCache.php' );

---

Fixing such inconsistencies in both the admin and component files made it possible for your extension to work properly once again.

Well, I don't know. For the sake of consistency, this is easy thing to do. Whether it breaks things is not obvious as what you describe is exactly what I am running at bluehost for instance, with my domain pointing to a dir, but everything ( main domain and subdomains) being redirected to sub-directories through .htaccess. Furthermore, Joomla itself does not always use this way of including files, as you can see by simply looking at main index.php for instance.
I have to dig further to find out about this.
Regards

I actually looked at the Joomla files to fix the code, as I'm definitely not a coder (Systems/Network Admin), and the same example code I provided above is what fixed your extension for me. It would only make sense, considering the original code is attempting to call the file from the root structure, which definitely wouldn't work as you're working out of the sub-directory instead.

I'm not sure how or why it's working for you on Bluehost, but I've certainly not had any problems like this with any other extensions or programs in the past. And I'm certainly not complaining either - it was fairly simple to fix and I'm very happy with the extension. So thanks again

Well that does not make sense to me, as we are not trying to include the file from the root, but from the current file, which is actually joomla index.php. This is how configuration.php is included in Joomla index file, and even in sh404SEF on some occasion. Is that working for you, or did you have to change that as well ?

The only files I've changed thus far are for your extension. My Joomla install worked "out-of-the-box" and I haven't had any issues with other extensions coded for it either. Which, after modifying the select portions of your extension with absolute paths, it has worked perfectly ever since.

Check out the recommended hosts on the joomla site. Those sites are recommended by the developers and community.