Confused about web platforms and shared hosting options

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aboylikedave

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Master Geek

#166356 10-Mar-2015 22:08

I have a very simple website (under 10 pages) in Wordpress, which I used to get me up and running as I had no experience creating a site. It is hidemyscore.com. In putting it together I learnt alot about php/parsing xml/bash scripts etc.

Despite being simple the site is not very fast I now feel that WordPress for this is complete overkill, so I wish to change to a lighter platform, and additionally it will give me the chance to learn new skills. I've been looking into Ruby on Rails or Laravel which seem great.

The catch is I have just found out these can't be hosted on my basic 'lite' shared hosting package for $30 per year (which is fine for WordPress).

My question is therefore are there any other similar frameworks to Rails or Laravel which can be hosted on lite? Or failing that any frameworks at all which can be hosted on shared hosting and are lighter than Wordpress and more suited to my needs for a simple website?

Or is a pure php site the best option? I have to admit that scares me slightly just in case, for example I suddenly need to add a feature in the future and would need to code from scratch.

Cheers

My EPL football websites: Get the results but hide the score of your team at HidetheScore.net. Compare league positions with wage bills at RealPremierLeague.net.

Dynamic

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#1254971 10-Mar-2015 22:13

Web hosting is like anything else.

You can have:

Good
Fast
Cheap

Now pick any two.

Source: 20 years IT industry experience, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle#.22Pick_any_two.22

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freitasm

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#1254973 10-Mar-2015 22:15

Tested your site (results here). In terms of platform speed your site is not much different than Geekzone (time to first byte). But then you have lots of images and it seems the server is not configured to use Keep-Alive (when a single connection is used to transfer content, instead of having to establish a connection for each element).

Try fixing this and put your site behind Cloudflare (even the free service). This will improve connection and other things.

aboylikedave

243 posts

Master Geek

#1254976 10-Mar-2015 22:23

...But then you have lots of images and it seems the server is not configured to use Keep-Alive (when a single connection is used to transfer content, instead of having to establish a connection for each element).

Do I ask my host about keep alive?

EDIT - Google tells me I can set this in the .htaccess file

My EPL football websites: Get the results but hide the score of your team at HidetheScore.net. Compare league positions with wage bills at RealPremierLeague.net.

aboylikedave

243 posts

Master Geek

#1254993 10-Mar-2015 22:25

Of course part of the subtext of my post is 'having taught myself some programming at the age of 50 I really love it and want a new project - which other platforms (which have advantages over WordPress for a small site such as this) can I investigate whilst still on my shared hosting lite plan?

My EPL football websites: Get the results but hide the score of your team at HidetheScore.net. Compare league positions with wage bills at RealPremierLeague.net.

michaelmurfy

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#1255008 10-Mar-2015 22:33

What I recommend really depends on your skill on server administration etc.

1) Deploy through a VM - I would recommend Linode for this and have been using them for years:
Pros: It is yours, you can do what you want.
Cons: Have to monitor it + patch + update etc, also takes time to deploy, price ($10/mo for their cheapest plan).
Ideal if: You want full control of what you host and want things running quick, also if you want scalability.
Partner with: Cloudflare, because I like Cloudflare.

URL: Linode - This link does act as a referral link so only use it to sign up if you like me, I'd appreciate it!

2) Use shared hosting - hmmm...
Pros: NO MANAGEMENT! YUSS!
Cons: OH CRAP THAT SITE IS GETTING HAX0R3D OR DDOS'D, I NO HAZ SITE!
Ideal if: FREEDOM! But, ho-hum speed.
Partner with: Cloudflare, because script kiddies DDOS'ing the server suck so your site always stays online.

3) Heroku (Ruby Hosting).
Pros: Learn Ruby, run PHP, do what you want.
Cons: Somewhat steep learning curve for beginners, can be costly depending on site demand.
Ideal if: You like messing around, potentially for free.

Anyway as the BDFL has suggested putting Cloudflare in front of your site can somewhat speed it up - if you're learning going towards a VM is a cheap and easy way to just go for it without the risk of wrecking anything + Linode do snapshot based backups meaning if you screw up you can revert back at the drop of a hat (had to do this many times). Linode also has Stackscripts that make deployment for newbies a breeze.

Anyway, pick your poison and just go for it.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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freitasm

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#1255017 10-Mar-2015 22:35

Before looking for a solution to the problem you have to identify the problem. Looking at your site's performance (from the quick test above), I don't think it's slow - the site itself is quick to respond but then the end user experience is bad because of the slow page load time.

Besides that test you could use a RUM service - try Pingdom. It will tell you how fast/slow, where and how.

Then you can decide if it's the platform, server configuration, etc. Then you can find a fix for the root cause.

aboylikedave

243 posts

Master Geek

#1255020 10-Mar-2015 22:42

My site pulls data from xml files on the server which are updated every 2 minutes - will this still be possible using free Cloudflare?

My EPL football websites: Get the results but hide the score of your team at HidetheScore.net. Compare league positions with wage bills at RealPremierLeague.net.

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michaelmurfy

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#1255029 10-Mar-2015 22:57

aboylikedave: My site pulls data from xml files on the server which are updated every 2 minutes - will this still be possible using free Cloudflare?

Yes - Cloudflare acts as a proxy in front of your site.

So User --> Cloudflare --> Site

Site --> Internet still exists so the site is not affected by Cloudflare at all. Cloudflare is purely a way to potentially speed things up for end users and put less load on your own server.