September 08, 2004

Blogging Blegging
Posted by Dale Franks

OK, we here at Qando have a problem. Today, for about two hours, I had to shut down PERL on the QandO site because the comments.cgi and even the mt.cgi files were running and taking up 75% of the CPU load. Because this site is hosted on a shared server, I can't shut off other web sites when MT is chugging away on this one.

Most of the problem was related to MT-Blacklist, which, when you have as many comments as we do (about 8500) is a server killer. Also rebuilds are extremely server intensive with MT.

I know that Kos had to dump MT because it simply couldn't handle the load. Instapundit is on MT, but, of course, he stopped alowing comments ages ago, presumably because of the load it put on his server.

Well, I'd like to keep comments, but I can't run MT if it's gonna cause that kind of server load when it runs the PERL scripts.

So, If we were to move over to something new, where do we go? I'm attracted to WordPress, but, because it's all dynamic, I'm not sure how the server load compares to MT. Mt. delivers static pages to the user, so that's nice and easy in terms of server loads. On the other hand, rebuilds are a killer, especially since we post quite a lot here on a daily basis, which requires a rebuild for every post. So MT gives you a really spiky server load.

Any suggestions?

TrackBack

Comments

Am I to read from your comments that you're running your own server for this blog alone?

Posted by: Bithead at September 8, 2004 09:00 PM

No. Qando is hosted on a shared server. If I had it sitting on a dedicated server I wouldn't care about the server load.

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 8, 2004 09:14 PM

http://www.haloscan.com/

powers comment systems for many bloggers.

Posted by: NeoKen at September 8, 2004 09:35 PM

Thanks, but the problem isn't just comments. Making new posts, or doing site rebuilds also kill the server.

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 8, 2004 09:47 PM

Ah, I see.
BTW, Dale, per our discussion, we're still on track for October.

Posted by: Bithead at September 8, 2004 09:54 PM

What about a scoop site like Redstate or Daily Kos?

Posted by: Markus Barca at September 8, 2004 10:22 PM

My site is running WordPress and so far I'm pretty happy with it. The server load doesn't seem to be all that terrible, although my traffic is much, much less than yours. If you want to drop a line to my WebMistress, I'm sure she could give you the scoop on it, since she runs both MT and WP sites on her servers.

Posted by: Jimmie at September 8, 2004 11:09 PM

RedState is about the slowest-loading site out there - not a good model.

Posted by: Crank at September 9, 2004 09:02 AM

You might be interested in seeing Venomous Kate's observations on Wordpress and, particularly converting from MT to Wordpress. She specifically addresses the re-build issue. Also check the comments.

She has several posts on the subject. Search her site for "Wordpress". I've been following this subject for some time since I'm considering converting to Wordpress myself. But I don't have your readership, processing issues, or problems. Yet.

Posted by: Dave Schuler at September 9, 2004 10:45 AM

I switched several sites from MT to Expression Engine. EE is dynamic (no rebuilds) but uses caching to reduce the server load significantly. Besides being extremely flexible (especially compared to MT, which is frankly a dino), its security model is such that spam comments and trackbacks, previously an annoying headache even with MT-Blacklist, are a thing of the past.

Myria

Posted by: Myria at September 9, 2004 12:08 PM

I really like the look and feel of Q&O. I hope that doesn't change. (But if it must, it must...)

Posted by: pdq332 at September 9, 2004 01:04 PM

Expression Engine costs 150 freakin' dollars. I'm looking for something a little more affordable, or alternatively, a lot more money from you people.

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 9, 2004 01:06 PM

Look at it this way, Dale;
Will EE support multiple blogs?
Do the math....

Posted by: Bithead at September 9, 2004 03:37 PM

Sheesh, Dale. There's no such thing as a free lunch you know. EE and other PMachine products are all excellent and well worth what one pays for them.

Posted by: Lance Jonn Romanoff at September 9, 2004 05:31 PM

Sheesh, Dale. There's no such thing as a free lunch you know.

You're absolutely right!

Have you hit the PayPal tip jar lately?

Posted by: Dale Franks at September 9, 2004 05:50 PM

I can answer that.

No.

Nobody does. That's fine. It allows me the brief conceit that I am somehow above this mensch "money" thing.

I'm not, of course. It's just that a lack of income induces that particular defense mechanism.

Posted by: Jon Henke at September 9, 2004 08:08 PM

I have now made my contribution to the QandO/EE Fund.

Posted by: Lance Jonn Romanoff at September 9, 2004 09:35 PM