45 days ago,
I started by journey of hosting my own Moodle site on a Web Host company. I started off with shared hosting, got turned off by the slow speeds, then upgraded to Virtual Private Server. The site just chugged along but my students complained that the site would load ever so slowly. Now, 1.5 months later, it's a different story.
I have spent countless hours and days, while others are asleep, surfing the Net feverishly for ways to optimize and to speed up my Moodle site. I've surfed to moodle.org, googled my way through, gingerly typed detailed Linux commands along the way. BTW, I love Linux now.
I've experienced hundreds of emails to and from my Web Host company, had a major server outage, times when my domain didn't load, recovered from a full harddisk due to automated & unmonitored backup files (I can't forget that one!), blank Moodle pages, loss of data, recovery and backups along the way. I survived. But TODAY, I think I've finally got it. Henry Higgens of "My Fair Lady" would say, "By George! I think (s)he's got it!!!". Anyway....here are two reasons why I am SO HAPPY TODAY.
Reason1: My Moodle site FINALLY runs with mod_deflate page compression.
So my moodle http requested pages are compressed before they are sent to the users' web browsers. Benefit: faster loading of pages, less waiting by users for their Moodle pages to load. http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=165904
Reason2: My Moodle site FINALLY runs with eAccelerator (PHP caching) just fine and dandy!
Benefit: faster loading of pages, less load on the VPS processor since first-time compiled PHP code is cached to shared RAM. Subseqent web browser http requests of cached PHP code is sent direct to the user with no need to re-compile php code. See http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=166284
My Moodle site is running FASTER now. I am safe for now, just as long as not all 20 students of mine log in at the same time inside the computer lab to my Moodle site...
Frankie Kam
http://scm.moodleace.com
Melaka, in sunny and rainy Malaysia
512Mb RAM, 512Kbps pipe, (Centos 5, Php 5.2.17) Virtual Private Server (VPS).
Now all I need is an additional 3.5Gig RAM and a 100Mbps line for my VPS. Ahh..that would be perfect.
P.S., My limited funds to upgrade my site have run dry. So if anyone else can share with me MORE concrete ways to speed up my Moodle site, I am all ears, and I will be HAPPIER STILL. How can I optimize my MySQL? Anything else I can optimize my Linux Moodle site?