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  1. #1

    * Better than laughing squid, but not much more expensive?

    Howdy! Nice to meet you

    This is my first post here, so I guess I'll take the chance to introduce myself: name's Lautaro, 24 year old, been programming since I was 13.

    I'm currently working as a Java dev at Thomson Reuters, and on a personal project in my free time.

    I've been using Laughing Squid for hosting. They're really reliable, I love the admin panel and the servers are always up. It only costs 8 USD a month and I'm getting everything I need: 2GB space, 50GB bandwidth, 1000 computer cycles.
    They actually run over rackspace infrastructure, I believe. Maybe resellers, dunno.
    I really love the hosting, except for one little issue: all requests seem to have a delay of over 3 seconds!

    My page, ideary.co, is taking about 6 seconds to load now-a-days. And I know that's definetively driving users away. Heck, even I can't stand navigating the site like this!

    Anyhow, I was wondering if any of you knew of a better (or at least, as good as) hosting. I don't need more space or bandwidth, just better response times.

    I'm looking for something less than 30 USD a month if possible.

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Hi Lautaro,

    Welcome to the WHT community. Make yourself comfortable and check out some of the threads. If you ever need some let someone know, most of us are willing to help.

    Enjoy the forums!
    HostClearly.com
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    Shared, Reseller, and VPS Hosting since 2010!

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    So, they are really reliable AND Slow - to me this means "no longer reliable"

    Sounds like there are a few possibilities - shared host that has an over-loaded server, shared host where they have added a few high-usage users and now everyone is getting slow responses, or a host whom have implemented CL and set the limits too low for most everyone.

    Either way, it is time to really look at your historic resource usage over the last few months and maybe find a better host.
    CPanel Shared and Reseller Hosting, OpenVZ VPS Hosting. West Coast (LA) Servers and Nodes
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  4. #4
    Thanks Harrison, RRWH.

    Indeed, I'm in need of a better host. Do you know any?

  5. #5
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    Based on your nameservers, you are running on Rackspace Cloud Sites which is there platform for resellers so you can cross off overloaded servers as a possibility.

    You would probably be better off with a lowend VPS at some point. As a dev, you'll benefit from the additional flexibility.
    iWebFusion.Net - Shared / Reseller / VPS / Bare Metal / Colocation / IP Transit / Networking
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  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by lautaro_dragan View Post
    Indeed, I'm in need of a better host.
    Do you know any?
    As per the rules, I can only recommend hosts whom I have used, and since I have not used anyone else in several years, I cannot, but stay tuned, I am sure that there will be a lot of people making suggestions shortly. (and no doubt several making pointless posts to get their sig in front of you as well)

    Should have mentioned that your budget is just fine for shared hosting - the $5-10 range usually gets something decent. As @Mark Muyskens mentioned, an un-managed VPS is well within your $30 top price.
    CPanel Shared and Reseller Hosting, OpenVZ VPS Hosting. West Coast (LA) Servers and Nodes
    Running Linux since 1.0.8 Kernel!
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  7. #7
    I don't believe the OP needs a Vps, he just need to get away from Rackspace Cloud Sites.
    Fernando - Bitline Hosting Services
    Web Hosting - Since 2002

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    New York
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    383

    Lightbulb Suggestion

    Quote Originally Posted by lautaro_dragan View Post
    Howdy! Nice to meet you

    This is my first post here, so I guess I'll take the chance to introduce myself: name's Lautaro, 24 year old, been programming since I was 13.

    I'm currently working as a Java dev at Thomson Reuters, and on a personal project in my free time.

    I've been using Laughing Squid for hosting. They're really reliable, I love the admin panel and the servers are always up. It only costs 8 USD a month and I'm getting everything I need: 2GB space, 50GB bandwidth, 1000 computer cycles.
    They actually run over rackspace infrastructure, I believe. Maybe resellers, dunno.
    I really love the hosting, except for one little issue: all requests seem to have a delay of over 3 seconds!

    My page, ideary.co, is taking about 6 seconds to load now-a-days. And I know that's definetively driving users away. Heck, even I can't stand navigating the site like this!

    Anyhow, I was wondering if any of you knew of a better (or at least, as good as) hosting. I don't need more space or bandwidth, just better response times.

    I'm looking for something less than 30 USD a month if possible.
    Budget is descent enough for going ahead. In this budget you can even buy a vps with good configuration. Just browse through them. Good Luck
    Hostpaedia - Affordable, Reliable & Secure Web Hosting
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  9. #9
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    Lautaro, do yourself a favor, and dont even think about getting a VPS.
    Yes, your budget is good enough for a low end VPS.
    Yes, a VPS sounds more powerful and lucrative than any Shared Hosting account.

    Doesnt mean you should go blindly for a VPS. You may get a decent unmanaged VPS for 30 odd bucks, but managing a cpanel account (on a shared hosting) and a VPS are two vastly different things. Trust me, if you havent done it before, you dont wanna get into managing a VPS in order to maintain a handful of your sites.

    If you need hosting for your own site only, get a shared hosting account from a decent provider (based on ur location) or a Reseller account if you want to host multiple sites. As a newbie here, I wont be suggesting you any hosting providers. Let others suggest from their experience, but dont go for a VPS as you dont need all that hassle at all. You will be much happier on shared hosting where the hosting provider will manage everything for you and you will be free to concentrate on your job and hobbies.

    My $0.02

  10. #10
    THanks for the answers, guys!

    Indeedy, I think a VPS right now may be overkill... yet it sounds like so much fun! I always wanted to learn how to handle one, and I know should be needing it in some months / a year.
    Still, I don't think I got time right now for it, and a shared hosting should do for the time being.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    265
    Hi Lautaro,

    Before completely ruling out your existing host, have you checked to see if it could be your web application that may be at fault? To double check this, make a "Hello world" HTML test file and see how long that takes to load. If it loads quickly then it is the web application (Joomla?) which needs to be reconfigured. If it loads slowly then I would suggest asking your current host to look into that - at least give them a chance to fix the issue for you.

    Cheers,
    Chris

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
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    5,079
    Just to check: You code in java by day. Is your site's backend also written in java? If so, you'd be narrowing down possible hosts considerably.
    Not as active on WHT as I used to be, but still drop in and receive email notifications from here.
    My personal blog site: https://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog

  13. #13
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    Welcome to the community ok the budget is fine in my opinion, your site is using Joomla 2.5. I hope that is 2.5.16. Your site did take a while to load for me and also returned a 404 error, not sure if you set it to that or if it just doesn't work anymore.

    I've never heard of Laughing Squid before so I had to Google them. Ended up on a Blog and then had to go to a link to get to their website: laughingsquid.us.

    They use 5.3 PHP, you'll probably find a suitable host for you using 5.4 and have a PHP Selector to pick any version 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5.

    MySQL 5.1 you'd be using probably the newest version 5.5.

    Anyway after their specs out the way, you should find a nice brand new host, however you'll have to ask them to help you transfer since your current provider doesn't use cPanel (That I can see).

    I recommend FreshRostedHosting & CrocWeb for hosting. Good luck.

  14. #14
    Join Date
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    5,393
    Quote Originally Posted by lautaro_dragan View Post
    THanks for the answers, guys!

    Indeedy, I think a VPS right now may be overkill... yet it sounds like so much fun! I always wanted to learn how to handle one, and I know should be needing it in some months / a year.
    Still, I don't think I got time right now for it, and a shared hosting should do for the time being.
    A VPS can be a lot of fun, with your budget I recommend getting a good shared host for $5 - $10 month and a low-end vps (many are available at just a few dollars per month). This way your site will be set for now and you can practice server administration and optimization on the VPS.

    For recommendations, HawkHost and MDDHosting are two options that always work well. For the budget vps take a look at RamNode or BuyVM.net
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  15. #15
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    I did a Google Page Speed analysis of your site and revealed a lot more than just slow hosting.
    It appears to me that the majority of time is to resolve the DNS and start the initial page load. After that i pretty much renders it for a second.

    You might be better of with a new host with a cloudflare installed (or maybe a host with litespeed, memcached or another web accelerator). Enable some caching and optimize your CMS a bit. If you are still running Joomla 2.5 now there is 3.0 and in a few days 3.2 - the improvements are significant and you should upgrade.

  16. #16
    @Chris-M: Good idea! I tried the hello world test, it's in /helloworld.htm

    I get a 500ms waiting time for the hello world, according to Chrome's Network panel, vs ~3 seconds for /index.htm.

    I'd think it's really due the low performance of ideary's database code... I guess I'll have to do some profiling.

    Still, I'd like to try other hosts, a faster one may patch things up until I can really fix them.

    @JamesOakley: there's no java, it's all php+mysql+javascript

    @CW Mike: Joomla 2.5.9 appearently... Shouldn't get a 404, the site's so buggy! :/ LS offers php up to 5.4, I can set it up in the web settings admin panel. There'll be no problem with site transfer, I use MySQL Workbench for the database and Filezilla for the files, that takes care of everything. The DNS isn't laughing squid's so that shouldn't be an issue either.

    @DWS2006 sounds like a plan, I'm gonna go for that, shared hosting for now and VPS to start playing around...

    @kambone how can that be? how could I speed up the dns resolving?

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by lautaro_dragan View Post
    @Chris-M: Good idea! I tried the hello world test, it's in /helloworld.htm

    I get a 500ms waiting time for the hello world, according to Chrome's Network panel, vs ~3 seconds for /index.htm.

    I'd think it's really due the low performance of ideary's database code... I guess I'll have to do some profiling.

    Still, I'd like to try other hosts, a faster one may patch things up until I can really fix them.
    Your test at www.ideary.co/helloworld.htm loads instantly here.

    I don't think this is a problem with your host and moving to another one may just be moving the same problem elsewhere.

    I suggest doing some database optimisation (try running the MySQL "analyze" operation from phpMyAdmin and see what it comes back with, then run an "optimize" and/or "repair").

    Best to fix the problem at the source than just brush it under the carpet.

    Cheers,
    Chris

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris-M View Post
    Your test at www.ideary.co/helloworld.htm loads instantly here.

    I don't think this is a problem with your host and moving to another one may just be moving the same problem elsewhere.

    I suggest doing some database optimisation (try running the MySQL "analyze" operation from phpMyAdmin and see what it comes back with, then run an "optimize" and/or "repair").

    Best to fix the problem at the source than just brush it under the carpet.

    Cheers,
    Chris
    Same here.

  19. #19
    Allright, I'll try and optimize the database code.

    Thanks so much for the help, everyone!

  20. #20
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    DNS resolving should be adressed by your host.
    Good luck and let us know how it turned out at the end.

  21. #21
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    There's nothing wrong with your DNS: A Pingdom full-page test resolved it in 73ms, and loaded hello-world in 232ms - all said and done: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/b9Vb...helloworld.htm
    Not as active on WHT as I used to be, but still drop in and receive email notifications from here.
    My personal blog site: https://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog

  22. #22
    Hey guys, I'm back with a little feedback.

    First off, I have to say I'm really happy with Laughing Squid, it's an amazing host.

    As I dug deeper into ideary's code... I realized optimizing it is almost impossible, but I'm already thinking of a new version done from scratch, which I'd need either way. Word of advice: NEVER HIRE CHEAP PROGRAMMERS! And if you know how to do it, do it yourself!

    On the other hand, I did find two things that can really speed up my site a lot.

    One: I recently stumbled upon digital ocean SSD servers, 5 USD / month and you get yourself a full virtual machine instance running on ssd harddrives... balzing fast! I'm in love. Haven't really tested them in production yet but some cheap load testing tells me the 5 USD a month Digital Ocean package should work as well as my 6 USD a month Lauching Squid account, except that twice as fast. And you get full control of your machine using Putty.

    Two: php's shared memory may be able to speed up my homepage a lot, too..

    Just thought I'd share this info with everyone as it may be useful.


  23. #23
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    Well, if you go with a VPS, remember you will need to install all the services you need. There is no cPanel or other Hosting panels.
    And with 512MB of memory you might run out of it quickly.

    Also in real world, SSD is not twice as fast, it really depends what your are doing with it.

    Good luck, and welcome on WHT
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  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Julien@Hostabulous View Post
    Well, if you go with a VPS, remember you will need to install all the services you need. There is no cPanel or other Hosting panels.
    And with 512MB of memory you might run out of it quickly.

    Also in real world, SSD is not twice as fast, it really depends what your are doing with it.

    Good luck, and welcome on WHT
    I know, but it was really easy to set up an ubuntu and get it running. Dunno about the security, but as a programmer, I'm really glad to have complete control over the OS rather than using the clumsy cPanel.
    And as for the twice as fast, that was my observation after running some load tests on my development site running on Digital Ocean's servers, and also running queries from MySQL Workbench, it's not something I've read somewhere or anything like that. It does make sense things go really faster though. It even loads faster than my localhost!
    The 512 megs for RAM also worked fine for the load tests, and that's with a 64bit Ubuntu. 32bit ubuntu should work smoother with such low RAM.

    Just my 2 cents.

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