Very slow loading

[ZuSe]

Hello folks,

we tried out deploying Wordpress on Bluemix for production use, using this project:
https://hub.jazz.net/project/jstart/WordPress%20on%20Bluemix/overview

Unfortunately we had to release that the site runs pretty slow (more than 10s waiting time for the first doc).
I also tried upgrading the cleardb plan to boost and give the runtime 1GB memory, however the beneficial outcome was very small.

So my question are their known problems with this type of deployment regarding speed and performance?
Any things we can change in the config that might fix it?

Thanks in advance!

Best,
Patrick

[jlstack]

Patrick,

Have you enabled the WP Super Cache? We have seen vast improvements when this plugin is configured. Instructions for doing so are in the README.

Can you clarify on what is slow? Is the admin page slow? Is there a time difference between authenticated and non-authenticated calls? Are you using any custom plugins?

Lastly, are you willing to share the url?

-Luke

[ZuSe]

Hi Luke,
thanks for your response. Yes, the super cache plugin is activated, it reduces the load time by approx. 5sec)
However, the admin panel and the page are still very slow. For testing I have deployed the page to MS Azure, just to have a comparison. Feel free to compare them your own:

https://www.teleclinic.com/ (Docker-Image on Azure)
https://tcwp.eu-gb.mybluemix.net (WP on Bluemix with php buildpack)

From what I found out it has a hard time to generate the dynamic styles file (dynamic-styles.php.css) on Bluemix (I gave the runtime twice the memory the docker image on Azure got assigned). Any idea what might cause this behavior?

Best,
Patrick

*Update:
Here the times I get on loading the file:

BLUEMIX

dynamic-style.css.php?ver=4.5.1 200 stylesheet (index):83 32.8 KB 4.87 s
dynamic-style.css.php?ver=4.5.1 200 text/css modernizr.js?ver=2.5.3:4 32.8 KB 5.54 s

AZURE

dynamic-style.css.php?ver=4.5.1 200 stylesheet (index):87 5.1 KB 239 ms
dynamic-style.css.php?ver=4.5.1 200 text/css modernizr.js?ver=2.5.3:4 5.1 KB 133 ms

[lmsurpre]

Interesting. Is dynamic-styles.php.css dynamically generated or can it be cached via CDN?

Bluemix on Wordpress was initially done as an example of how to take an existing application like Wordpress and tweak it to be more cloud-friendly (using services like ObjectStorage instead of local file storage). There is quite some latency between the application and the ClearDB-hosted MySQL, but we found the performance acceptable for most common scenarios after enabling super cache.

One reason for this latency is that ClearDB is one of the few hosted db offerings that is not co-located by default. For more dynamic, db-heavy sites, you might be better off either asking ClearDB to host your DB in the same SoftLayer datacenter OR running your own MySQL image and connecting to that.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison with your Azure deployment, we invite you to try the IBM Containers runtime option in Bluemix. When we last tried it, there was a slight hiccup while mapping a volume to /var/www/html, but we made a little fork of the official WordPress image to work around that issue: http://blog.ibmjstart.net/2016/01/26/wordpress-on-bluemix-containers-update/

The image linked from that article will automatically connect to ClearDB if its bound, but it should work without a Bluemix-managed ClearDB instance as well (like if you decide to run your own MySQL in a container). If you don't allow user-uploaded content or otherwise modify the wordpress installation, you may not need the volume--in which case you could just use the official image (or any other you wish).

[ZuSe]

Hello Lee,
it's fully dynamically generated. Many premium/paid tempates have it to offer you a wide range of customization functionality. The plan was actually to get rid of the docker image to slim down the deployment and make maintenance more easy. That's why I really liked the idea of deploying wordpress within the php-buildpack instead of dealing with containers. When it comes to scalbility I would also rather prefer objectstorage than a local diskspace.

Is there any chance to replace the pack with a more performant runtime? The Azure container is using nginx with php-fpm, dunno how the buildpack exactly works.

Also, I just tried connecting the bluemix appliance with a maria db running on a VM in London datacenter as well, sadly it had no effect on the page load time at all -> Seems really to be an issue with the buildpack.

Best,
Patrick