Serendipity Forums

This is not my bug, but I read a remark on opensourcecms.com, and thought at least I could re-post it here:

If you have lots of entries (500+) this piece of software becomes dramaticly slow (index load time aprox 10-15 seconds). Our real-life test with 1400+ entries resulted in in servercrash with 5k unique traffic a day. specs: Serendipity 0.8-beta4, PHP 4.3.2, GenuineIntel, Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz Linux 2.4.21-27.0.2.EL i only recomand this software for smal sites with few updates a month.
Posted by dude, on April 11, 2005 at 6:18

I know he is using a beta version but I did not know it this might be a persistent problem. I think it could just as well be in a slow database.
http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php? ... iew&id=205

Please do not mail me about this, since I know no more than what is says here. Remarks could be posted on the linked website.

http://www.ottic.de/ for example has more than 800 entries (running with >50 other blogs an a PIII 1GHz/512MB RAM), so I bet it's opensourcecms.com

thanks for letting us know, marc

I've also responded to opensourcecms.com.

I stated that I know some blogs with 3000+ entries which still perform within 1-2 seconds a page. It all depends on the proper server setup and if you've got the caching plugin activated and your database is properly using index keys.

Regards,
Garvin

I have 800+ entries on mine and it is still faster than any other blogging software I have tried. Bravo Zulu to the s9y team.

I just upgraded to the latest release, and I have noticed a huge slowdown on my site. It was getting slower and slower each day, with each new entry, but now it has gone to a crawl.

It's not my server/host. I have 5 websites with them, and they are all database driven, and are far larger than my current blog, but they still zing along just fine, so it's got to be the software, somehow.

Brian,

we are eager to help, but need more information. If you can provide us with this, we will try our best to investigate your situation, which is of course not bearable

1. Tell us the URL to your blog

2. Which database and version are you using?

3. Check if your database user has the INDEX privilege, and that all your serendipity tables contain at least one index. You can check with tools like phpMyAdmin, phpPGAdmin or sqLiteadmin, or just examining SQL dumps

4. Which PHP and webserver versions are you using, and on which Operating System does your host operate on?

5. Are you using special caches? It is very advised to use a tool like APC or eAccelarator as a PHP Bytecode cache, it will vastly improve your speed.

6. Which Serendipity sidebar and event plugins are you using

Best regards,
Garvin

I have found your problem.

Your RSS plugin sidebar ("RemoteRSS Feeds") for foxnews is causing the trouble. Fetching the RSS data seems to timeout on your site, and/or the caching fails.

Check if your cache timeout plugin config setting is set to a large enough amount. Make sure that your 'archives' subdirectory is writable for the webserver to save the cache files.

Regards,
Garvin

My website is www.iowavoice.com.

I am using the very latest release of Serendipity, although I was using an older version and upgraded.

I am using MySql version 4.0.23.

I looked around the database in MyPhpAdmin, and I didn't see very many index files at all, so perhaps it didn't create them correctly.

It's not really a big deal, I am planning on upgrading to movable type or something similar soon.

Posted at the same time.

I'm not sure that would cause it. It also is extremely slow in the admin areas. Verrrrry slow.

If you plan to migrate to MoveableType, go ahead. It's your choice.

If you care to debug, the most important thing I need is your plugin list.

I am absolutely sure that the RSS plugin causes your long index page load times.

Regards,
Garvin

The only plugins I have working at the moment are:

QuickJump Calendar
Browse archives by month
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar
Holds a nugget of HTML in your sidebar

The nuggests are things like the ads and the google scripts. These were all there before I upgraded, and it worked just fine then. Although, I did notice a slight slowdown before, but nothing like it is now.

Event Plugins

Announce entries
[Layout-Plugin: Quote-Markup]
Markup: Serendipity
Markup: NL2BR

Don't get me wrong, I love the software because it has some great features that I don't think other software has, and it's real simple to use.

Feel free to email me. If you want, I can give you some account info so you can access my server site and look around in there, too.

I think you may have been right!

I removed the RSS feeds from the site, and it seems to be a lot faster, even in the admin area.

Thanks!

I'll let you know if the problem resurfaces.

Great, I also felt it instantly.

As you've removed my comment on your blog posting correcting the issue, may you be so kind to either re-edit your entry to point to this thread here, or restore my comment about the real cause of the problem?

To fix your issue permanently, just make sure your 'archives' folder is world-writable, so that PHP can create the feedcache file...

Regards,
Garvin

I must have been in the process of removing the post, too, when you sent this. Both the comment and the post are now gone. I explained in my email to you that I removed them (comment and the post) because I didn't want people to get the wrong idea about the software, because I actually like Serendipity. It's far easier than other things I have tried, and I like the features (like uploading pics within the software, for example), so I decided to remove the post so as not to lead people to think it's crap, when it's certainly not.

Thanks again for all your help!