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How’s the blog doing?

Quick question: how's the performance of the blog these days? Normal? A little sluggish? Lightning fast? Infuriatingly slow?

Just curious. I'm just wondering how my hosting company is doing lately.

UPDATE: OK, thanks. The reason I asked, obviously, is that performance lately has been abysmal and I was hoping against hope that it was just me. But it's not.

I use Bluehost, and for the first couple of years it was fine. Then it started to deteriorate and a few months ago it just imploded. Occasionally it's fine, but usually it's molasses slow and it constantly loses connection to the server or throws up a 5xx error. A bit of googling suggests that everyone hates Bluehost these days because their performance has become so bad.

So I suppose I should switch hosting services, even though the thought fills me with dread. In theory it's easy: make a backup, restore to the new server, wait for the new DNS to propagate, and you're done. In reality, I know there's no chance of things going so smoothly. Plug-ins? Comments? Stored images? RSS feed? Etc. etc.

But I'll have to bite the bullet eventually. Anyone have recommendations for a reliable WordPress hosting service?

57 thoughts on “How’s the blog doing?

    1. cmayo

      Yes, there are times when it hangs for 30+ seconds before loading. Other times when it fails to load. I couldn't guess all that much as to the cause without knowing specifics, but perhaps resource throttling by the host.

  1. KJK

    Slow at times. Has an annoying habit of requiring a user to sign in again, even if the user has been posting daily (perhaps its a feature for security and fighting SPAM?)

    1. shapeofsociety

      I really really hate how it won't remember my login for more than a few days. The New York Times has no trouble keeping me logged in!

  2. barleyfreak

    Glad you asked! I have noticed that it sometimes takes a very long time to load. So much so that I suspect I have lost internet. Then I check another site and lo! I haven't! Your host can be glacial at random times. I do not notice this in any other regularly browsed site.

  3. kenalovell

    Seems normal to me, i.e. quite acceptable. It uses very little RAM compared to some other sites - 72 MB on this page compared to 850Mb for my Disqus profile page.

  4. Larry Jones

    Maybe I'm an outlier with a 300 Mbps fiber optic hook up, but I have no problems with the speed of this blog. I'm probably also an outlier in that I design websites, and so I have learned patience.

  5. dspcole

    Seems fine to me but I am not connoisseur of internet speeds. I’m still not sure why I am not able to make the first comment to a topic. Always had to be number two or later- but I don’t take that personally…

  6. Steve_OH

    Slow, but more importantly, I get frequent errors. Either the site itself throws a 5xx server error (most common), or I get an error saying that the connection to the database has failed. I'll try to get a screenshot next time.

  7. weirdnoise

    Right now? Speedy. But it's been pretty erratic for the past week or so. Not seen the 504's some others have seen, but it can take a minute to load sometimes but a fraction of a second others.

    I have seen a weird phenomenon where I post a comment, it appears on the refresh, but then disappears for some minutes if I reload the site. It's like the provider is sending an older copy of the page (other recent comments disappear and reappear, too).

  8. MikeTheMathGuy

    "A little sluggish" calls it just about right for me. Noticeable (before you asked) and a tad annoying, but nowhere near enough to send me elsewhere.

  9. NotCynicalEnough

    A lot sluggish and I'm on an 8 core desktop connected via gigabit internet so I don't think the problem is on my end.

  10. AnotherKevin

    Guy who posts this blog should put an average of about 1-2 additional posts per day. And get a comment system that allows upvotes, downvotes, etc.

    Otherwise, all's good.

  11. Art Eclectic

    I use Siteground for my non profit site, its more expensive but better than any other hosting service I've had. I paid them $100 to fully transfer my site, rather than take risks and spend hours and hours fixing a cluster.

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