Articles on WordPress Performance and security!

January 25, 2013January 9, 2017

W3 Total Cache 1.0? – Sneak Peek!

Update (Feb 5, 2013): The beta version that I tested, has been released as version 0.9.2.6 with more features than mentioned below. So, this post is void as of February 5, 2013 (in less than 2 weeks of publishing it). :(-

W3 Total Cache is back in active development, nearly after a year. I’m one of the lucky people who got the opportunity to test the beta version of the upcoming release, probably 1.0.0.0! It brings a few new features, including a more-intuitive troubleshooter. Continue reading “W3 Total Cache 1.0? – Sneak Peek!”

January 11, 2013January 10, 2017

Moving WP .htaccess rules to httpd.conf

Recently, in one of my clients’ server, we decided to move to the traditional Apache with mod_php instead of Nginx with php-fpm, after going through the pros and cons of each setup. If you are not aware already that AllowOverride All brings a major performance lag into the whole setup. To overcome this, we can move the rewrite rules written on any part of your site into Apache’s configuration file (apache.conf or httpd.conf or any other name depending on the distribution you use). By moving the rewrite rules into the httpd.conf, we could disable AllowOverride altogether for a particular site and make this Apache with mod_php server stack a bit faster than Nginx with php-fpm stack. Here is how you can move all the rewrite rules into your server’s config… Continue reading “Moving WP .htaccess rules to httpd.conf”

December 21, 2012October 10, 2019

Varnish 301 Redirect

Note (as of August 30, 2017): The original post was published for Varnish 3. A lot changed since then. Currently, we have a nicer way to achieve 301 redirects. Thanks!

Varnish is a powerful caching HTTP reverse proxy server. It can sit in front of Apache or Nginx and can cache the requests that are configured to be cached. Varnish offers a lot of flexibility on what to cache and what not to cache. However, it doesn’t offer any simple redirection by default. When it stands in front of a general purpose web server, it sends the requests to the backend (in our case, Nginx), and then sends the backend response to the browser. While this is the natural process, there are a couple of ways to reduce this round-trip and save a bit of time. After all, every millisecond counts! Continue reading “Varnish 301 Redirect”

November 15, 2012January 9, 2017

Implementation is everything

There was an interesting question in the Nginx mailing list regarding replacing Varnish with Nginx as a load balancer. Let me quote the question directly here…

The question:

We are using Varnish in front of 3 load balanced web servers running apache. We had migrated from one hosting platform where we had 1 app server and 1 database server using Varnish (Drupal 6.x) and had no issues. Now that we are running in a load balanced environment (3 load balanced apache web servers, a Varnish server, and 1 database server) we are seeing mulitple examples of cacheing issues. (Pages not displaying correctly… style issues, data input staying cached and used on another page, etc).
We think we can just replace the Varnish server and use a NGinx server. I don’t want to necessarily remove all the apache servers, but we have to get this cacheing issue corrected….
any thoughts…?

Continue reading “Implementation is everything”

November 9, 2012January 9, 2017

What Do You Do For A Day When Your Web Hosting Service Crashes?

There were two major outages on many sites during the past few weeks.

Amazon AWS EBS degradation
Outage due to Hurricane Sandy

Both these incidents affected many sites hosted in US East. Specifically, there were multiple sites that went offline during the recent Amazon AWS EBS degradation (nice alternative for downtime). Most sites waited helplessly until Amazon fixed it or waited until the after-effects of Sandy to go off. Others did the smartest thing. Moving the entire site to the US West coast. Continue reading “What Do You Do For A Day When Your Web Hosting Service Crashes?”

August 13, 2012February 21, 2013

Get The Best Out Of “Google XML Sitemaps” Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress is probably one of the popular plugins in WordPress plugins repository. At the time of this writing, it has been downloaded over 8 million times! It is not a small feat by any means. However, if it is used incorrectly, it can drag your site’s performance considerably. Some web hosts even alert the site owner, if this plugin is used in their sites and politely ask the site owner to remove it at the earliest. So, what’s wrong with this plugin and how can you make use of it without affecting your site’s performance (and your host’s CPU). Let’s dive in!

Continue reading “Get The Best Out Of “Google XML Sitemaps” Plugin”

July 3, 2012January 9, 2017

WordPress Backup Solutions

Do you have a backup strategy for your WordPress site?

If you have never asked the following questions to yourself, then this article is for you…

What to backup?
Where to backup?
How to backup?

This (not so) tiny article discusses the proper way to archive your data, shows the various options available to do the same. If you ever care about your WP powered site, take a minute to read further. Continue reading “WordPress Backup Solutions”

June 15, 2012January 9, 2017

Do “Not” Update WordPress Core Now!

By now, all of you would already be aware of the next major version of WordPress. Whenever, there is an update to the WordPress core, I usually send a friendly reminder to my clients to update their WordPress sites. However, I do not do that when there is a major release, update or upgrade (however you wish to call it). Actually, I’d usually send an email, not to update the WordPress core in their sites, if it is a major release. Wonder why? Read on to find out. Continue reading “Do “Not” Update WordPress Core Now!”