Since updating this blog to WP 2.0, the WP-Cache plugin has stopped working as it had been (i.e., it’s not doing anything anymore), and the performance of either WordPress or MySQL has been incredibly sucktacular. It can take over 30 seconds to generate a page. Requests are occasionally timing out. This just ain’t right.
I thought it might be a GoDaddy issue – they’ve had database performance issues in the past. But they assure me that everything is running fine. One of the downsides of using a hosting service is that I kinda have to take them at their word.
Next, I thought perhaps I am simply hitting the database too hard, with all of the plugins that I use adding up to 130+ queries to generate the main page of this blog. So, I temporarily disabled all database-related plugins, and switched themes to the stock Kubrick theme. No joy. Still takes (up to) 30 seconds to generate a page.
I turn everything back on, and there’s no noticeable difference in page generation time. The frustrating thing is that the time to generate a page appears to vary wildly – from just over a second, to over 30 seconds. For the same page.
My gut’s telling me it’s a server load issue. The only stuff I have running on my account is WordPress 2.0 (I have a wiki, and PlanetADCE is still there for legacy purposes until I get around to dropping it – but neither of these gets any traffic).
Are there any performance issues with WordPress? Can I go back to GoDaddy and know for sure that they need to fix something?
Update: I just got an “answer” from GoDaddy Support. They suggest that I switch to use their Web Site Tonight product – apparently either a proprietary or private label “website templating application”. Given that the “Premium” package for that product provides you with 20 pages to work with, I don’t think this support person groks wtf a blog is. 20 pages would last me a couple of weeks. And the hosting package I have specifically includes PHP and MySQL servers, which is why I switched to GoDaddy in the first place. Now, they’re trying to upsell me to a higher hosting tier rather than fixing their database performance? That just sucks. I’ve asked the support person to escalate the issue, because the only other viable option is to migrate to a different hosting provider.
Since updating this blog to WP 2.0, the WP-Cache plugin has stopped working as it had been (i.e., it’s not doing anything anymore), and the performance of either WordPress or MySQL has been incredibly sucktacular. It can take over 30 seconds to generate a page. Requests are occasionally timing out. This just ain’t right.
I thought it might be a GoDaddy issue – they’ve had database performance issues in the past. But they assure me that everything is running fine. One of the downsides of using a hosting service is that I kinda have to take them at their word.
Next, I thought perhaps I am simply hitting the database too hard, with all of the plugins that I use adding up to 130+ queries to generate the main page of this blog. So, I temporarily disabled all database-related plugins, and switched themes to the stock Kubrick theme. No joy. Still takes (up to) 30 seconds to generate a page.
I turn everything back on, and there’s no noticeable difference in page generation time. The frustrating thing is that the time to generate a page appears to vary wildly – from just over a second, to over 30 seconds. For the same page.
My gut’s telling me it’s a server load issue. The only stuff I have running on my account is WordPress 2.0 (I have a wiki, and PlanetADCE is still there for legacy purposes until I get around to dropping it – but neither of these gets any traffic).
Are there any performance issues with WordPress? Can I go back to GoDaddy and know for sure that they need to fix something?
Update: I just got an “answer” from GoDaddy Support. They suggest that I switch to use their Web Site Tonight product – apparently either a proprietary or private label “website templating application”. Given that the “Premium” package for that product provides you with 20 pages to work with, I don’t think this support person groks wtf a blog is. 20 pages would last me a couple of weeks. And the hosting package I have specifically includes PHP and MySQL servers, which is why I switched to GoDaddy in the first place. Now, they’re trying to upsell me to a higher hosting tier rather than fixing their database performance? That just sucks. I’ve asked the support person to escalate the issue, because the only other viable option is to migrate to a different hosting provider.
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Chris, I’m looking at the page generation metric that WordPress burns into the tail end of every page it spits out (it’s commented out, near the bottom of the source for a page) and that only includes the PHP and MySQL generation time for the page itself. External stuff loads roughly in parallel.
Alan, from what I understand, the built-in caching is somewhat different than WP-Cache did. WP2 apparently caches portions of pages (database queries etc.) while WP-Cache stored the entire generated page as a flat file, and returned that directly (and VERY quickly).
It’s entirely possible that I’m seeing a cretin attack, but there aren’t any noticeable spikes in the logs provided by GoDaddy (well, not in the Analog output that I get to see, anyway).
I had gone in and verified/repaired/optimized all tables in the database, with no luck.
It’s a stumper, unless the GoDaddy server is acting up…
I thought WP2 had some caching built in the negated the need for the WP-cache plugin. (I had problems with that plugin nuking the popularity contest plugin.)
Have you gone in with something like PHPMyAdmin and optimized some of the tables? The comments, and the SK2 tables end up building alot of overhead. I am not sure how much that factors into performance, but I like to flatten them out every two weeks or so.
I did not see any significant speed up or slow down in going from WP 1.5 to 2.0.
Any chance of getting hit hard by any cretins?
I wonder about the content coming from off-site, like the flickr block and sitemeter data. Often these can slow down a pageload if they’re experiencing downtime. I have the same setup as you, running on a repurposed dell in my lab, but then again I don’t have nearly the traffic that you do… just some thoughts.
I’m running WP2, K2, and just about the exact setup you are…plenty of plugins…no problems. I’m not an expert by any means, but I think you are dealing with server load issues.
If you act now I’ll throw in an extra pair for free… and not only that you get a free control panel! Your site is acting slowly from where I am as well.
Let me know if you want to move off, I have a server in Texas with relatively low usage that you can have an account on, pro-bono :).
Thanks for the offer, Sami. I just might take you up on that, depending on how this plays out.
Hopefully the offer comes with the Ginsu knives 😉
[…] [Edit]As just mentioned above, I noticed some problem with WP 2 page loading speed. Right after publishing the article, I found, via technorati tag of “WordPress”, D’Arcy was also talking about the WP2/MySQL performance issue. We need to figure out what the problem is, once we get time. Technorati tags: WordPress, XPress, technorati […]
Hi,
now your site is fast, what have you done?
(53 queries. 0.712 seconds in the front page)
I’ve the same issue with a fresh install of WP2.0.
Thank you.
Not sure what might have changed. It is running a LOT faster today. All I’ve done recently is dump the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin (shaving ~100 queries from the front page) and delete all of the disabled plugins from /wp-content/plugins
Either one (or both) of these things helped, or Godaddy tweaked their database…
Hello, I stumbled upon your page after searching for godaddy mysql slow performance. I have the same sluggish problems on my PHPnuke based page. It is defintly server load. I’ve tried contacting their support as well and given the the same “run around” treatment, which resolved nothing. USA EST peak times in the early evening seem to be the worst times or early in the afternoon.
As you mentioned, this has happened in the past and I stuck with godaddy for a year now hoping it would get better, but it’s finally time for me to switch providers. Even though the $3.95/mo economy hosting can’t be beat, I’m at the point where I rather shell out a few more bucks for something that is fast, responsive, and works.
Hope it works out for you.
I’m experiencing similar issues with a different hosting service (that has been completely reliable in the past), and wondering if there is something in the WP 2.0.x caching mechanism that might be problematic.
When I delete the cache folder within wp-content, the problem disappears, but later re-appears as the cache begins to fill.
Any more comments about this?
I had some issues with setting up permalinks on Godaddy and posted how to do it correctly here
I’m having the same problem. GoDaddy, WordPress.
It seems as though GoDaddy's servers are maxed out pretty badly. I wound up switching to Dreamhost – slightly more expensive, but a MUCH better service. WordPress performed great after the switch. Of course, I've since switched from WordPress to Drupal, which appears to be performing even faster…
Yeah definitely avoid GoDaddy's hosting services, their servers are wildly overloaded and full of mostly new users who just wanted a quick solution after registering their domains. Dreamhost are great for small hosting accounts and highly recommended.
How do you monitor the SQL queries and find out how many queries per page are being generated?
This is stumping me!
Eric, there are some debug plugins that expose the information on the generated pages. I’ve long ago moved to Drupal, so don’t have the plugin name handy, but it’s probably “performance” or “developer” or “debug” or somesuch. Drupal’s module is called “devel”
I would highly recommend that you move away from GoDaddy hosting. They are really not good for that. Don’t get me wrong, I have all of my domains through them, I just dont use them for hosting any of them. The quality of hosting just isnt there. I would highly recommend host gator or pretty much any other major hosting company (except 1and1, they stink too). Hope this helps!
Enjoyed everyones thoughts on this issue – I thought I’d way in. I was experiencing the exact same things…. I’ve tried everything to fix it – and you know what did it?
Switching hosting providers.
After working hard to get GoDaddy’s customer service to help (to no avail) I just gave up on them.
GoDaddy has terrible shared server environments – and is awful for hosting wordpress. I highly recommend switching over to a better hosting system – I’m using Mosso, and my blog (same blog that godaddy blamed as the problem) now loads in no time flat.
Way faster than the 30 seconds it was taking on GoDaddy!