I take care of a site that is hosted on a godaddy shared server. The site is built around a highly customized version of oscommerce and is almost completely dynamic. I'd say just about every page includes calls to php and/or mysql. The site gets as many as 100 visitors at a time but averages 25-50. The site is getting slower and slower on average. At times it is good but sometimes pages take forever to load.

Keep in mind that I have never liked godaddy hosting and would not use them myself. However, this particular customer seems determined to stay with godaddy and is, typically, willing to eat up all their lies and excuses for bad performance.

Lately they are saying that "optimizing" the database would solve all performance issues. I've written plenty of php for mysql on many servers and this godaddy server is, by far, the worst from a performance angle. So I just don't see how any database maintenance of any kind could possibly make the site fast.

My advice is don't hinge a good and successful business on $50 a year shared hosting. Much less godaddy hosting. So I suggested to just try another shared server somewhere else before moving to a dedicated server or vps. But by no means should they consider staying with godaddy.

Am I right or wrong? I feel like I've been lied to by godaddy enough to not believe a single word from the mouth of any level 1 support rep.

To me godaddy is a hosting company with enough credibility to get away with lying.

Any advice. What can I do?

    Lately they are saying that "optimizing" the database would solve all performance issues. I've written plenty of php for mysql on many servers and this godaddy server is, by far, the worst from a performance angle. So I just don't see how any database maintenance of any kind could possibly make the site fast.

    Without knowing how well written the SQL statements are at the moment, it is impossible to say.

    My advice is don't hinge a good and successful business on $50 a year shared hosting. Much less godaddy hosting. So I suggested to just try another shared server somewhere else before moving to a dedicated server or vps. But by no means should they consider staying with godaddy.

    I agree, though I'll suggest moving to a VPS ASAP.

      Thanks for your reply. Can it make a huge difference to not use wildcards in the statements unless thay are really necessary? Most of the statements are oscommerce, which I would assume is fairly efficient, but I could be wtong.

        Do you think that making the queries more efficient alone could make that big a difference?

          I have had a quick look at your previous threads, and I have to say that you don't seem to know SQL good enough to have it optimized as it is. The code would probably be much faster if you optimized the database and queries. As an example make sure that you don't do a query inside a loop.

          When I see your talk about godaddy I get a feeling that you have been burned by them at some time and have something personal against them. Because of that, and because I don't know anything about them, I don't trust what you say about them. I won't comment godaddy hosting at all.

          What I will comment is hosting in general. Hosting, even with a dedicated server, is cheap. Losing customers because the web site is not fast enough is expensive. And customers are impatient, if they find a slow site they will leave it and go somewhere else. The small fee for fast hosting will probably be returned numerous times by customers that actually stays on the site.

            Can it make a huge difference to not use wildcards in the statements unless thay are really necessary?

            I have never did benchmarking to see if there was a big difference, but selecting the appropriate columns is unlikely to be worse, and makes the statement more explicit, so it should be preferred anyway.

            Do you think that making the queries more efficient alone could make that big a difference?

            As I said, it depends. Besides queries, you could look into creating appropriate indices.

              Thanks laserlight. And Piranha, please don't bother. Thanks anyway.

              Wouldn't one think though, that oscommerce query code is pretty good.

                Wouldn't one think though, that oscommerce query code is pretty good.

                Probably, but to state that without any analysis would be judging a book by its cover.

                  Godaddy could also mean by optimizing the database to actually use the OPTIMIZE TABLE [tablename] syntax in mysql? This can speed up the site if the data has been fragmented over time. Also, have you enabled the cache in osCommerce?

                  I work in a hosting company and there is sometimes cases that even when we have done all that we can, it just wasnt enough. Usually its the fault of unoptimized code(for example couple simultaneous users can eat 50% of cpu even on a dedicated server etc.). But ofcourse theres also those that would have needed a server farm to run their site(and ofcourse they dont want to pay more than before) 🙂

                    cahva wrote:

                    I work in a hosting company and there is sometimes cases that even when we have done all that we can, it just wasnt enough.

                    Ditto, but because of the sarcasm I sometimes convey, I will not divulge who (they are in the top 5 though).

                    You could always figure out which pages are the slow ones and optimize them. Also, as already mentioned, you an use the MySQL command optimize table to reduce overhead and fix fragmented data files. I would run this first then check your site out again.

                    In regards to using wildcards, if you select 50 columns of data and only need 5, what do you think the answer would be?

                      mj99 wrote:

                      And Piranha, please don't bother. Thanks anyway.

                      Wouldn't one think though, that oscommerce query code is pretty good.

                      Well, you asked about optimizing the database and queries, and I answered. I think that oscommerce code is pretty good as well, but you said that it was build around oscommerce and I just thought that you ment that you have added and changed a lot. If it is pure oscommerce I assume it is done with pretty optimized queries.

                      I don't understand why you don't want opinions that doesn't support your own, but ok, I'll stay away from this thread.

                        4 days later

                        mj99, you're throwing away good advice... Piranha may be blunt and to the point, but he's right in that you should be looking at optimizing your queries. Look at the number of posts of the guys posting in this thread. Nobody sticks around that long if they're not helpful.

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