Server configuration of WordPress

There are so many topics in internet on how to speed up a server for WordPress, but I feel it is best to simulate an environment similar to WordPress.com.

You would be right … if you were running as big a network as WPCOM. You’re not. I know you’re not because no one is.

The problem is there isn’t ONE right way to tune your server. It has to do with how your site is used, who uses it, what you allow people to do on their blogs, and so on and so forth.

Speed up your server in general by reducing latency, optimizing memory and CPU usage, balancing caches, considering things like SPDY and memcached and so on.

https://tweaked.io/guide/nginx/

Ya that tutorial covers basic aspects for nginx, which I always follow, thanks. I have not tried memcached though. So if you are to advise some one on a thumb rule, which one would u suggest to go along with nginx? Varnish, memcached or redis.

Let’s say am talking about a VPS with SSD drive, 1 GB ram and one core processor running a WordPress instance with 4k views and 100 comments per day. Its using nginx, fast CGI php and xcache.

Also would you suggest enabling nginx page speed module? some really advise against this, arguing that it consumes a lot of memory.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts…

You could try using Facebook’s HHVM instead of PHP-FPM (usually much faster than PHP 5.6) and use nginx’s FastCGI cache for caching the output from HHVM (= page cache).

Then make use of W3 Total Cache for browser and object caches and for minification of resources (js, css).

Lastly, sign up for free CloudFlare account which gives you free CDN, further resource optimizations (js asynchronous loading, images compressed and CDN-ed, SPDY) and also a free SSL cert (= so you can use https).

I’m using this combo at my sites and apart from having to restart HHVM once in a while (done by monitoring script), I’m running fine.

If you want some specific resources, look at my delicious.com bookmarks profile where I’m gathering all performance tips and tricks :).

Ya I have heard about HHVM, restarting is not a problem we can automate restart using supervisor and use php fpm as a fall back in case of an HHVM crash.

But problem is that, it is explicitly mentioned in the HHVM documentation that it might not be compatible with all WordPress plugin and themes.

Have you experienced any such problems? Any plugin or theme compatibility issues?

To be honest, I’m not using much plugins for longer periods of time so I can’t say for 100% that it is compatible with all. On the other hand, I’m successfully using hhvm with woocommerce, revslider, visual composer, w3,essential grids, to name a few.

Is it OK to have 3 moderate traffic (2000 visits per day) WordPress instances running on HHVM? Will there be any memory problems like running out of RAM or so?

Also which VPS are you using?

Three instances of that caliber (2000 visits per day) running on 1 GB of RAM is quite a lot IMO (with all the other things). HHVM likes to cache a lot of stuff and it takes some RAM. I don’t have a comparison between PHP 5.6 vs HHVM 3.4 RAM usage at my disposal.

I’m using a local provider (vpsfree.cz, Czech Republic and Slovakia) which gives me 4 GB of RAM by default so I have plenty of it (= that’s why I’m not much concerned with it).

The best thing you can do is test it yourself and see if it is worth it.

All in all, I think that until PHP 7 doesn’t arrive, HHVM is the best option we have.