Tell us what you are trying to do? I have a site that uses a Custom Search View for 160 CPTs (professional mentor profiles) as well as one slideshow on the home page. We expected a big launch but the site went viral in the industry and killed HostGator's server.
HostGator suggested using a cache plugin to start as the site is resource heavy (from Views). We are installing WP Super Cache per their recommendation. I'm curious to see, how much would that reduce server load on memory usage? We are looking at 7000-10000 visits a day, the majority of which are loading these CPTs or filtering through the Custom Search. Also, the slideshow View is loaded on the Home page and there is one slideshow View in the sidebar of every page showcasing a slideshow of featured CPTs.
This sidebar slideshow can be converted into a standard slider plugin if that is adding to the memory load.
Hi, a caching plugin can eliminate quite a bit of server load in certain cases. For example, you can cache your homepage contents, archive contents, and the static contents of single post pages effectively. These pages can then be served up from cache with less processing from the server.
However, search and filter results are not as easily cached, because they utilize URL parameters extensively. Also AJAX updates - like when a slider calls in content one-by-one - are more difficult to cache for similar reasons. Depending on how your site's theme and other plugins are architected, there could be any number of other pieces of content that cannot be cached effectively.
So it's difficult for me to say exactly how much load you will be able to save, but I think implementing a cache plugin is a good idea anyway. Your server won't be taxed as much on basic page loads, which should free it up to handle some of the uncached pieces more effectively.
Once you have a cache system running and configured as you like, you can try disabling the slideshows temporarily to get a baseline of server performance over a period of time. Then reactivate them and note the difference over a period of time. This comparison can help determine whether a new approach for the slideshows is necessary.
Let me know your thoughts.
I installed W3 Total Cache per other suggestions on this forum. Do you have any recommended settings for it? The one linked to in the main article here was dead. I've just used the defaults for now. I assume it caches CPTs and Views as long as it's not parametric? I couldn't find any documentation that confirmed that but since your team recommended it, I'm assuming that's the case.
I removed AJAX functionality for the Views and removed the custom search -- used individual Views by category and just a bullet list of links to each one instead. That made HostGator happy. Though what I don't get is that I've done a similar setup on a Bluehost site with more traffic and a bigger database of CPTs; they had resource issues but simply upgraded the account and that was that. HostGator's only option was to slash AJAX, Cron, and Javascript.
The best source of information for W3TC is their support forum: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/w3-total-cache/.
There's some anecdotal information in other tickets in our forum, but little in the way of documentation. Google search "site:wp-types.com w3tc" or "site:wp-types.com w3 total cache" for some examples, like these:
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/optimal-caching-for-parametric-search-wp-super-cache-w3tc/
https://toolset.com/forums/topic/large-amount-of-postscustom-type-with-custom-fields-25k-post-viewsearch/page/3/#post-327002
General caching info:
https://toolset.com/faq/working-with-caching-plugins/
Uploading Toolset resource directories to CDN via W3TC:
https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/toolset-resource-directories-for-cdn-upload/
Some suggestions from other users:
- Set caching time to 1 hour in W3TC. It will save server resources and will show new posts for most users (every hour)
- Adjust the page cache settings so the page cache is purged whenever a post is added or edited.
- Do not cache pages with CRED forms if these CRED forms should trigger email notifications or cred_save_data hooks.
For the site in question, there are four categories that output profile lists based on Views. The profiles are static -- the client has entered all of them.
Would it save on server processing power if I took the raw HTML output of those views and pasted them into a page? So the same content is produced but without calling out the View function?
They are still displayed in a CPT with a custom content template, though the content template is just HTML/CSS. How much does an output with a content template drain on resources?
Would it save on server processing power if I took the raw HTML output of those views and pasted them into a page? So the same content is produced but without calling out the View function?
Of course, this will reduce the number of database queries and the amount of processing that must occur in order to generate the page markup. In fact, this is how some caching plugins work automatically - they generate entire static HTML pages using the output from dynamic pages, and serve those up instead of re-rendering the dynamic pages on every hit. You tell the plugin to update the cached static page on a specific schedule, or when posts are created / edited, or using some other criteria.
They are still displayed in a CPT with a custom content template, though the content template is just HTML/CSS. How much does an output with a content template drain on resources?
I can't say a specific percentage or number, it depends on the post content, the template itself, your host environment, other plugins, theme architecture, just to name a few. I'm afraid my best answer to this is "more", and the amount of server load when you use static HTML is "less." To get specific numbers you would need to run some tests over time.
Great, thanks for all the info. AFter all this digging around, I think the answer is a combination of your suggestions and finding a new host without HostGator's limitations. Apparently I'm not the only one frustrated by their resource allocation.
