Symphony.

I would like to share my experience with a website which is currently under development. This site uses a lot of section links (between brands, products, downloads, galleries etc.) and some advanced datasource filtering, of course.

The website became slower and slower during development, running on a shared hosting account. (Page generation took around 10 seconds for some pages.)

Then I moved it to a virtual server with 2 GB of RAM. It rocks! Speed has been increased by factor 15, approximately. (Tested with Apache Bench.)

So if you are having trouble with a Symphony 2 website running too slow, try and move it to a virtual server. RAM seems to be a very important factor.

(We all know about this if it comes to desktop computers. Hey, you wouldn’t try and open Photoshop on a Mac with just 1 GB of RAM, would you?)

I just this second posted to a thread by nils about his lack of git on his hosting - my point was that even a modest VPS will run rings around a shard hosting account and you will have an infinite amount of flexibility.

And contrary to popular belief they aren’t expensive, you can get started for $20 a month or even less.

And contrary to popular belief they aren’t expensive, you can get started for $20 a month or even less.

That’s true, virtual servers seem rather cheap. But to be honest, there are some disadvantages as well: you might have to learn a lot, and you don’t get the “full service”, normally. Especially if we talk about backups – on a shared hosting account they are generally done by the provider, while on a vServer you are responsible for your files and databases. You should keep this in mind…

Especially if we talk about backups – on a shared hosting account they are generally done by the provider, while on a vServer you are responsible for your files and databases. You should keep this in mind…

That’s a fair point, but backups are often a cheap extra these days too. I have a 256MB slice with slicehost for $20 a month, and for another $5 a month I get backups. Specifically I get a daily, a weekly and a spare slot I can use to take a backup any time I like.

It’s always a balance with cost, ease of use etc but if you need control you need the freedom a VPS gives you. The learning curve can be tough (I speak from experience) but it pays off in the end.

My main problem with a lot of hosting providers is that they quite simply make offers that they can’t follow through on. Unlimited bandwidth, storage and email accounts for a tiny cost - it’s doomed to failure!!

The latter is true for sure. “Unlimited” means “we will slow you down”, at least.

but if you need control you need the freedom a VPS gives you. The learning curve can be tough (I speak from experience) but it pays off in the end.

Well, yes and no. I never intended to become a programmer – all I intended was to create websites. But the last consequence is: hire a Debian (virtual) server, forget about any control panels and learn all this -NIX geek stuff. I am on my way, but don’t tell me it’s easy! :-)

So I wouldn’t recommend this to someone who has just noticed that Wordpress has come to it’s limits on his shared hosting account. If Symphony is the way to go, then this this CMS should have priority “A”. The next thing might be the -NIX stuff.

I really don’t recommend a virtual server with “it’s so easy” (Parallels or whatever) control panel. In my eyes it’s a really bad compromise. So if you need a virtual server, you will have to learn how to administrate it – that’s a really big step.

but if you need control you need the freedom a VPS gives you.

So don’t get me wrong. My advice was meant to solve performance problems. Indeed you can be happy on a shared hosting account as long as the complexity of your website is low enough to be handled there (and the performance is high enough).