Wordpress/Gallery on Dreahost Private Servers

I've put myself on the waiting list for a Dreamhost PS, but I'm not sure if I will see a big benefit over the standard shared hosting.

In terms of the dreamhost system, where is the major bottleneck here? Is it the MySQL server, the file server, or the webserver? As far as I can tell, the Virtual Servers will only help CPU intensive sites - ie it will only help the webserver bottleneck. It won't help if MySQL is slow, or if the file server is slow.

Or have I not understood something?

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As far as I can tell, the Virtual Servers will only help CPU intensive sites ...

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Well, it will also help sites that are *memory* intensive; other than that, I'm thinking you understand it pretty well!

--rlparker

So, it is fair to say that for a basic personal wordpress and gallery site, the Virtual Server won't be too beneficial?

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So, it is fair to say that for a basic personal wordpress and gallery site, the Virtual Server won't be too beneficial?

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I wouldn't say that at all! Both WordPress *and* Gallery can be very memory and CPU intensive depending upon how they are configured!Tracking down exactly what is causing poor performance for a WordPress or Gallery site involves looking at the total picture (MySQL access, filer performance, server loading, concurrent connections on the server, code efficiency, javacript usage, remote content/ad fetching, embedded "offsite" web services, memory usage, CPU resources, image usage, network latency, etc, etc. etc.)

One of the biggest issues with WordPress performance is some people's tendency to heavily load it with plugins of varying code quality, and the sheer number of plugins (or even a single sloppily coded one!) can consume a lot of memory!

Gallery, particularly when resizing large collections or generating thumbnails, can also be a *huge* memory/cpu hog.

I'd go so far as to say that in the majority of the cases where users are experiencing less than acceptable performance on personal blogs/galleries that are not very heavily visited (those without *lots* of hits/visitors) these issues are more likely to be the cause of slow performance than the distributed MySQL or a slow filer, and a DH PS might make a very big difference.

--rlparker

OK. Well, I will wait and see, I guess.

Hopefully, it will make a difference, as you describe.

Thanks.

Hey, we can always hope, right? The nice thing about the PS program as I understand it, is that you can test it and see if it helps at a minimal cost - if it doesn't really help, you can always discontinue it.

--rlparker

Yeah, the other potential benefit that I'm hoping for is that it is a more monitored environment. This means that it will be much less likely that a bad neighbor will move in and gum up the works.