MODX overhead and optimization question

Hi all. I'm looking for some help in optimizing the Page load times on a commercial site we are developing.

I've searches the forums and haven't been able to find anything that addresses my concerns. I realize that the base server configuration has an effect on the speed of page generation. We are limited to using a shared server, so we have to work within those limits. I also realize that uncached snippet calls such as with getresources and wayfinder, which we are using (cached) on certain pages, can have a large impact on speed.

So, to establish a baseline, I measured the latency and download speeds for three cases using the same HTML:

• -static HTML file
• -flat HTML in contents field of new resource using empty template (no MODX calls)
• -HTML integrated into MODX using templates, TVs and Chunks. 1 snippet call to BabelLinks

These are the results:



I'm sure you can imagine the situation only worsens once we start adding further snippet calls.

Where should I be focusing my efforts to reduce the latency I am getting? PHP memory limit is currently set to 32MB. I can bump that up a bit. But are there other MODX or PHP settings that can help my situation?

Hello MokoJumbie,

Could you tell us more about the hosting? What is limiting you to shared hosting, just the budget?

It's a shared rackspace server. We are limited to using it due to budget constraints. We would like to ensure we've exhausted all our optimization options before considering modifying our hosting plan. However, it's been difficult to get numbers by which to comparatively evaluate our site's performance on MODX. So I'm really hoping someone can give some direction on where we can focus our efforts.

Btw, I don't have any other specifics about the hosting package at the moment. What kind of further info would you like me to provide?

Hello,

It would be great to know what the http server is, how php is configured (DSO, CGI, phpsuexec...), php version, database (and version), all running on the same server?

If you want a feel for how things can run try testing our site. I just ran firebug's "net" and the home page came up in about 630ms. I suspect with some tweaking that could be brought down further. [ed. note: AMDbuilder last edited this post 12 years, 6 months ago.]