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I'm helping a friend out, he's running a CentosOS 6.4 server, with Apache/2.2.24 (Unix) httpd server. His site is running on WordPress 3.81 (latest version) and he's having 30,000 unique page views per day.

He is running this setup on a dedicated Intel Xeon Dual Core, 2.3GHz (4 threads), 5GB RAM server.

His load averages are way above 1 (around 14-16) which I know is wrong. As far as I'm concerned his hardware setup is fair.

Is there anything he can do to optimize his server other than upgrading hardware?

I was told that the plugins might make the troubles, here's a list of the plugins installed: Askimet , All In One SEO Pack , Configurable Tag Cloud, Contact Form 7, Dave's Wordpress Live Search, Google XML Sitemaps, Multi-column Tag Map, Newsletter, Popular searches tag cloud, Search Metter, SEO Friendly Images, UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore, Video Thumbnails, Video Thumbnails Pro, Wordpress Mass Email to users, WP-PAGENAVI, WP-PostRatings, WP-PostViews, WP Super Cache

Please let me know if any additional information is needed.

Quaker
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    30k/day?!? That's only one every three seconds or so. TomTom's phone can handle that much. You're going to need to collect information on CPU, RAM, and Disk performance and then use that to determine where the bottleneck is. If I were to guess, the problem lies in the disk subsystem. What are you seeing for iowait on the system? – EEAA Mar 09 '14 at 14:04
  • @EEAA, here's `iostat`'s output: http://pastebin.com/T8LXJVuv and here's `top`'s output: http://pastebin.com/PsJxGyyZ which isn't telling much to me. – Quaker Mar 09 '14 at 14:14
  • @EEAA here's `free`'s output: http://pastebin.com/KMTxNkSv how shall I proceed? – Quaker Mar 09 '14 at 14:15
  • Load average looks just fine. Not seeing the 14-16 you mentioned above. You need to collect data on a long-term basis, not just a single `top` snapshot. Look into munin or possible sysstat. – EEAA Mar 09 '14 at 14:17
  • @EEAA Using the tools you mentioned will help me determinate the bottle neck on high load times? – Quaker Mar 09 '14 at 14:22
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    It will give you the data you need. Then you'll need to do your own research on how to interpret and respond do that data. – EEAA Mar 09 '14 at 14:24

2 Answers2

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Fixing the performance problems on a server is a really hard job. There is no magic fix. Just collecting the baseline metrics will take at least a couple of days. A good performance analyst will then spend several hours looking at your current config before coming up with a proposal for intervention. This then needs to be tested over a comparable period to the baseline exercise.

he's having 30,000 unique page views per day.

Sorry, but this is almost a completely meaningless metric. The only information it conveys is about your level of experience, not about the demands placed on the system.

Worpress is a particularly slow and heavy piece of software. While there is a wealth of stuff which can be done to improve it's performance, it's way too complex to detail here. For a quick win move the output of the tag plugins into cacheable HTML fragments and install an ESI capable reverse cache.

symcbean
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  • I'm not a professional (not novice) IT guy, I was just trying to help my friend out. I can understand that this is way above my skills and knowledge so we're gonna hire pros to handle this one. You'r quick win did get things better, but yet not to the required levels, thanks for that. – Quaker Mar 11 '14 at 12:47
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Read http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/02/09/why-i-dont-host-my-own-blog-anymore/

He talks about WordPress speed, what he did to make it faster, and links to http://speed.wpengine.com/ a tool to analyse a WordPress site and note any obvious causes of slowness for it.

TessellatingHeckler
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