Well, we’re here to give you a simple and quick tip to reduce the resource usage of your WordPress blog while increasing the overall performance due to the decreased load that your blog will generate, all you need is 5 minutes and FTP access to your blog.

The wp-cron.php file runs with every single page load by default on WordPress blogs, which means that for every 1 request you get, you generate another one. This effectively translates to 1000 page views are actually making 2000 requests, which doesn’t make sense!

You see, WordPress was designed to be extremely easy to use, therefore, this easy to use system was put in place under the assumption that it was plug and play, because you never had to worry about it before. However, they assume once your traffic gets busy, you’d likely take care of it anyways.

Before we start, make sure that you’re comfortable with your using FTP and editing PHP files. Also, you want to always take backups of your website and files before making any changes to always go back if you have any problems.

1. Disable the wp-cron.php by adding the following line anywhere in your wp-config.php file. You should put this line right after the <?php line.

   define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

2. Now, we’ve disabled the wp-cron.php, but some of your plugnis most likely rely on it, not to worry, all you have to do is create a cronjob with the following command.

   wget –q http://mydomain.com/wp-cron.php -O /dev/null

   If you’re using cPanel, you can look at the documentation on how to create a cronjob right here.

Voilà. Your website’s resource usage has effectively been cut in half and now your server will start performing much better overall. We’ll continue to post quick performance tips from time to time, so make sure to keep up with our blog!

We recommend the combination for nginx, php-fpm and Percona Server with XtraDB (optimized version of MySQL). We’ve found that the combination of all three creates a high performance setup that can take full advantage of your cloud server efficiently. Let’s get into a bit of details about each of them and why we choose them.

Nginx

nginx, pronounced “Engine X” was written by Igor Sysoev, a russian system and software engineer. The idea behind it was to create an extremely scalable web server which can solve the C10K problem. The watered down simple version of the C10K problem is the simple fact that serving files shouldn’t require such a huge overhead, this issue is solved by leveraging event based systems which are implemented into the kernel such as epoll, poll, the Solaris alternative /dev/poll and the FreeBSD/NetBSD/OS X kqueue.

The good thing is that nginx has proven itself since 2004 until now to be the best choice to get the most performance out of your servers. As an example, our friends at CloudFlare which we are proudly a CloudFlare hosting optimized partner which run a modified version of nginx over their entire network of 23 datacenters all around the world that have serve 70 billion page views, each month.

PHP-FPM

php-fpm is hands down the fastest way of running PHP scripts. It was created by Andrei Nigmatulin. There was no way to run PHP with a FastCGI interface so he took it on himself to start building it. Eventually, the interest caught on as people saw the performance increase and more people started contributing to the project. Initially, it was a set of patches that were applied to the PHP source code and eventually become a module.

However, it’s position really solidified when it was merged into the main PHP project core after work by Antony Dovgal and others. It has now become the official FastCGI SAPI for PHP, it’s also used by a lot of users from all around the world like WordPress which you can also host on our WordPress hosting platform as well!

Percona Server with XtraDB

Percona is one of the leaders of high performance MySQL servers. They provide a highly optimized MySQL database server which is capable of giving a huge performance increase. They even have commercial support should you require anything more and have a very helpful and supportive community help.

We cannot stress this enough, make sure you are using InnoDB for your databases and not MyISAM. You really, really, really want to be using InnoDB. We will explain this in an upcoming post but let’s just say one of the biggest performance reasons is full table locking on changes. If you’re inserting or updating a row, your whole table cannot be used until that operation is completed.

In other words, if you’re running Facebook and someone is updating their profile, you’re going to wait until their update query is complete for your queries to run, which slows down things significantly. This goes to mention that MyISAM still has good, but we’ll put all that for a blog post on it’s own, for now, InnoDB!

Installing the software stack

These instructions will be specific to CentOS 6 however they are very similar for Debian and Ubuntu, the package names are usually just different and you’ll be using apt-get instead of yum. However, if you’re not comfortable with installing packages, you should probably look into our managed hosting service where we take care of all of this for you!

1. We like to always install from packages instead of building from source, this ensures that you can get support easier and those packages have most probably been tested by multiple other parties and any other problems you see will easy to find as others might have seen them!

2. We will install the Percona Server first. The repository helps make this extremely easy and allows us to easily upgrade when new releases come out without having to recompile from source. The following script will install everything, setup MySQL to start on system boot and set a secure root password for MySQL, then display it. You’ll need to note down the password as it’s very important to have.

3. Your database server is now setup! Let’s setup the PHP backend, it’s pretty simple and fairly straightforward. We’ll assume that you’re not looking to do virtual hosting and just need to host 1 single website. We’ll do that small sed because we’ll be using the nginx user to run on instead of apache.

4. The PHP backend is now running, we’re at the final stages, we’ll start by installing the nginx web server and making it run on system boot.

5. We’ll need to edit the /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf file to connect the nginx server to our php-fpm backend. You can use any editor that you want, you’ll update it as the following, the red lines should be removed and the green should be added.

   Once we’ve done all those changes, we’ll start nginx and we’re going to have our entire system setup and ready now.

6. We’ll be able to verify the installation by going to the servers main IP address in a browser and we’ll be able to see a message like the following:

   

7. Now, we’ll take this an extra step and make sure PHP works, you’ll need to create the file /usr/share/nginx/html/phpinfo.php with the following contents and navigate to it (http://your.ip/phpinfo.php), you should see information about your PHP installation.

8. We’ll quickly install WordPress to make sure everything is working properly. Make sure to replace $SQL_PW by your root password which we created.

   If you haven’t logged out of your session, it should be still there, you can verify this by typing echo $SQL_PW. If it’s still there, you don’t need to replace it in those commands!

   You’ll see a message showing your WordPress database user password so make sure you note that as well.

9. The rest of the installation for WordPress can be completed using their simple installation, so we’ll navigate to the installation page which should be at http://your.ip/wordpress and it should look something like this. Click on Create a Configuration File to get started.

   

10. Make sure to fill the form with the details like in the picture, replacing the password with the one you obtained from step 8.

    

    It should go through with no problems, the rest of the installation should be personal website settings, you can set those to whatever you’d like and finish the installation. You can navigate to http://your.ip/wordpress and check out your brand new installation!

Finals words

We really think that this setup can get you quite far on a single server, but if your site keeps getting busier and busier, you can add more backend workers, nginx instances or even setup a clustered MySQL backend. The nice thing about this is that all of your technology stacks are ready to scale up and scale out.

If you’re ever looking for a fully deployed custom cluster, we’ve built multiple clusters which handle very large amounts of traffic for our customers and they are extremely happy with the fast performance we’re able to deliver by leveraging our cloud platform, contact us today with your requirements and we’ll make them happy.

Our system is designed to always make sure that your scripts are up to date and send you email notification if they are not, letting you know to upgrade them. Not to mention the one click WordPress installation which our customers love!

However, technologies like WordPress are so fast paced and change a lot. If you’ve used WordPress for a long time, not a couple versions away we had an old simple UI with no AJAX or responsiveness, but the project has come a long way from since it was first established.

WordPress is undoubtedly the script of choice if you want to start a blog, it has an immense ecosystem of plugins that can make WordPress do a large variety of things and a huge theme base which allows you to customize the looks of your website, we’ve even seen it used for more than blogging, such as a content management system and even eCommerce websites!

With the latest update, codenamed “Elvin”, it brings us some of the coolest features ever and one of the things that WordPress is known for, 1 new base theme per year, and we finally have a new one, Twenty Twelve

Unfortunately, this update added some extra security checks which broke some of the older plugins and will give you an error along these lines:

If you are not a developer, the first step to make this not so nice warning disappear is to open your wp-config.php file and add the ini_set function call as follows:

This will hide all those warnings and your page should appear properly without those errors, however, the plugin is most probably still malfunctioning. The first step is to make sure all your plugins are updated, as the developer might have resolved that issue already!

If all your scripts are up to date, then you can look at the error and try to identify the theme or plugin that’s causing that issue, as you read from the error we wrote above, you’ll notice classipress which links it to the ClassiPress theme, you can then contact the developer so they can look into it, possibly including this helpful post by Andrew Nacin, once of the lead and core developers of wordpress.

TL;DR: Upgrade your plugins, if you’re still seeing the error, contact the plugin developer!

1. Create a CentOS 6 cloud server

   You can do this by logging into your cloud control panel and creating a server using the “CentOS 6.3″ template. If you’re feeling fancy and you have the CLI tools setup in place, a unique security group for cPanel servers and a key pair for your machine, you can run the following using the nova utility, just shows you how powerful the OpenStack platform is!

   $ nova boot --flavor nb.1G --image a2cdc491-1954-4abb-8969-655dd4af240b \
               --key_name MacBook --security_groups cPanel

   Once it’s ready and active, you can start by logging into the server via SSH.

2. Prepare the server for cPanel installation

   Our images are all preloaded with minimal operating systems in order to save space and be more efficient. The first step is to install the main requirements for cPanel that will be missing which are wget and perl.

   # yum -y install wget perl

   You will also have to make sure that you have a correct hostname setup for your server as when creating a cloud server, the hostname is setup to what the server name is. You can set your hostname by running the following:

   # hostname server.hostname.com

3. Start the cPanel installation process

   One of the nicest things about cPanel is how extremely easy it’s installation process, it takes care of everything and works extremely well, in order to start the installation process, you can run the following in SSH:

   # cd ~
   # wget -N http://httpupdate.cpanel.net/latest
   # chmod +x latest
   # ./latest

4. Reboot the server once the installation is done

   Most of the time, the operating system will be updated via cPanel so it will ask you to reboot the server to start in the new kernel. This should be the last step of the installation proess.

   # reboot

5. You’re done, once the server is rebooted you can access your server’s cPanel & WHM with no problems!

   cPanel: http://your.ip:2082/
   WHM: http://your.ip:2086/

   Make sure to replace the your.ip by your servers’ public IP address

And it’s that easy! Getting cPanel to run on our cloud requires no extra complicated work and we can supply you with a cPanel control panel license as we are one of their partner datacenters!

PHP / Dynamic Pages Performance Optimizations
We have rolled out a new feature as of today on all of our servers that leverages the security of suPHP (a module that runs PHP processes under your own user for full security) and the performance of DSO (in layman terms, a module that includes the PHP within the HTTP server, improving performance significantly). We have taken advantage of also upgrading to PHP 5.3 in order to support all the latest applications on our service.

With this new change, we will have restored the original way of configuring options on your server using “php_flag” and “php_value” in .htaccess which will make changing PHP configuration much easier, instead of dealing with complex php.ini files that would not propagate recursively into folders. You will also see a significant performance change on your website and notice that sites load much faster, this is because of the new DSO implementation that we have engineered and implemented.

However, PHP 5.3 introduced a lot of deprecations and potential issues, our upgrades and continuous integration teams have monitored all the servers while they were being upgraded in order to make sure that if any of our customers scripts would stop working, we would fix them right away. If we have missed any websites, please contact us via support and we’ll handle it right away for you. Please make sure you include “[5.3]” in your ticket so it’s marked with extra priority.

MySQL Performance Optimizations
We have switched all of our servers to use MySQL 5.5, however, we do not use the regular MySQL 5.5 version. We have engineered and worked internally in order to optimize the MySQL engine to work with the type of loads that are usually seen on our hosting servers. The performance results are extremely significant and they are extremely noticeable. We have been to measure and see servers able to serve far more queries per second (which means faster response times) with much lower performance overhead (no extra slowdowns).

The custom modifications that we have in place are exclusive to our hosting customers and you will be able to continue to use MySQL with no problems at all. All of the regular features of MySQL will be working with no problems at all. If you encounter any issues, please contact our support, however, in our testing, we were unable to raise any issues at all and after a few days of being live, we have not seen any reports from our customers at all.

Outbound Spam Filtering
One of the common issues that we would face was issues with outgoing email delivery. Occasionally, we would have a malicious user that uploads a script and uses it to send thousands of emails to different email accounts, which lead to problems in delivering real customers emails because of the saturated mail queue and the throttling that was created by the remote mail servers because of the large volume of emails sent.

We have implemented a new proprietary technology that automatically detects outgoing spam, and in the even that it detects any of it, it automatically takes action by rejecting the email and never allowing it to leave our network, this ensures that no outgoing spam leaves our servers and will improve email delivery significantly, due to the fact that there will be no outbursts of spam emails until our engineers are able to track it down.

With these new features, we will make sure that we keep providing our customers with high quality and high performance affordable web hosting at low rates. We will continue to leverage the latest technologies in order to improve performance for our customers while keeping it affordable for all of our customers. This blog post has also been sent to all of our customers via email as well.

This has been a crazy week for us at VEXXHOST, we will be introducing a new set of partners in the coming week and the ones after however our first announcement is with our partnership with 123ContactForm!

We have heard a lot of input from our customers that host a simple HTML website that they designed using an offline web page editor then published it, such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. However, one of the most commonly asked questions is how can they setup a contact form.

Previously, most customers would leave their email on a contact page, however, that caused a bunch of problems for customers. You would have online bots that crawl emails online, once they find it, you’re in for a large amount of incoming spam, which can in turn increase the possibility that you’ll miss a legitimate email through the spam.

The other problem was the amount of people that engaged you. Nowadays, people using online email clients such as Gmail or Google Apps is extremely common. If someone is hesitant about contacting you, it feels like a much longer process for the customer to copy the email address, sign in to his or her email account and compose an email.

Also, if you use an online email client, you’ve had the misfortune of clicking on an email address that ends up opening Outlook, slowing down things on your computer and getting you frustrated. These points really show the importance of having a good contact form to maintain a good engagement.

123ContactForm allows to get up a simple contact form without having to know any programming skills. The code is generated for you and all you have to do is paste it in your editor. Once that’s complete, your form is up and it is entirely managed by 123ContactForm. That’s all! No extra work, no worries, just plug and play!

When we were approached by 123ContactForm for this partnership, it was great for us to be able to offer a tool that helps solve our customer’s problems with simplicity and ease. After working with their staff, we are happy to form with partnership with them!

From now on, anyone can login to their cPanel control panel and click on the “123ContactForm” link, where they will be redirected to their site and from there, you can start building your contact form for free!

• Developers
  If you are looking to test out an application on the cloud and review the performance, evaluate your customer needs and see for yourself the huge performance difference.

• System Administrators
  You can check and review the state of cloud servers and evaluate them for deploying and migrating your current infrastructure towards cloud servers for no cost at all.

• Virtual Private Server Users
  The cloud presents a large amount of advantages for VPS users, such as full server scalability; high availability, redundancy and extremely high performance compared to regular virtual private servers.

• Dedicated Server Users
  Our cloud servers are the only platform that allows you scale all the way from 256MB RAM to 95GB RAM without unnecessary migrations and long downtimes. It offers you much faster disk and CPU performance.

We hope that this incentive helps and assists all types of customers that are looking to bring their infrastructure to the cloud and aid the adoption of cloud. We want to really show how easy it is to get started on our infrastructure! Get Started Today →

• cPanel Servers
  With our cloud server reseller system, hosting companies are able to offer servers with cPanel included at an extremely competitive price. As a cPanel authorized partner, we have access to extremely aggressive pricing on cPanel licenses, allowing hosting companies to offer cPanel based servers to all of their customers at an extremely competitive rate.
• Windows Servers
  As a long time partner in Microsoft’s Service Provider License Agreement program, we have access to very low pricing for leasing Windows Server licenses. Hosting companies can pass on that low pricing onto their customers in order to convert more sales and start offering Windows based servers without entering any long-term agreements or commitments.
• Redundant Cloud Platform
  Our infrastructure has been designed and tweaked to perfection by numerous engineers, allowing all the components in it to work perfectly together. It has taken us years to get to the level of correct and proper, redundant and self-healing infrastructure that hosting companies can leverage and get started on at no cost at all.
• Aggressive Pricing
  The pricing that is offered to our resellers is extremely aggressive and hosting companies will have no problems offering an extremely competitive price in the market. With such a big cloud infrastructure, we are able to have access to hardware and resources at a much lower rate. Hosting companies can leverage an existing time-tested platform with no upfront fees at all, saving thousands of dollars in investments.
• Full Program Setup Assistance
  For each reseller that we setup, we give full assistance in the entire process of getting started. From the setup of the initial control panel to assistance of setting up a customized order form, similar to the one offered on our website, in order to help convert sales. Hosting companies will be dealing with one dedicated account manager that will always stay updated with them and which they can contact at anytime.
• WHMCS module
  We also offer a full WHMCS module, included for free, which we can install for hosting companies, or that they can install themselves. It automatically sets up everything in order to use the automation of WHMCS and it will automatically provision, terminate, suspend, unsuspend and renew accounts in the reseller system. Hosting companies don’t have to do anything but setup the pricing for your service.
• Full Control Panel
  With all of our billing system modules, we include a full version of our control panel that can be customized using templates. It offers all features of our control panel, including firewall management, console access, full power control, password resets, activity logs and performance graphs, all included for no costs and fully white-labeled.

We are extremely happy and we have seen a high satisfaction rate with the select clients that were testing our reseller environment that uses WHMCS, we have tested it extensively and hosting companies can easily get started, today, for free with no commitments or hidden fees. For hosting companies that are interested about this offer, you can read more about our cloud servers reseller or you can get started today by contacting us!

One of, if not the most influential person in marketing, design and innovation of consumer electronics and the entire technology world as a whole. If it had not been for Apple’s innovations, we could well possibly be still using flip phones, with no such device such as tablets.

He remained committed till his last days for his company, paved it’s way to continue it’s success and never lost focus of what he truly wanted. He had a clear point. He wanted to create products that changed the world. Not make money, and this might well be one of the biggest reasons of his success.

He leaves us on this sad day with memories of countless product introductions in his classy black shirt and jeans. The same attire he always kept in his product announcements that impressed all of us. He does not go unforgotten by his peers.

“I will miss Steve immensely.”
— Bill Gates (Microsoft)

“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.”
— Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

“He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance.”
— Larry Page (Google)

“Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now)”
— Sergey Brin (Google)

You can’t also forget what he’s done with Pixar studios: 12 movies, 26 academy awards, 7 golden globes & 3 grammy awards. There are few people that know about Pixar’s story and how it would have not been where it is at today, without Steve Jobs. For those with Netflix, The Pixar Story is a movie available on Netflix Instant documenting their start and Jobs’ involvement.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
— Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005

Within our team, we found inspiration in what Apple does to bring into our service. Implementing customer service that leaves our customers always happy, bringing the latest technologies to consumers while making them easy to use and bringing bold changes to the hosting industry. We are saddened to hear the news of his passing away and we would like to wish our deepest condolences to his family.

Signing this post off with proudly this signature, that he never removes when replying to emails sent to his personal address:
Sent from my iPad

Also, with the new system, we will be able to accomplish far faster response times which means a better service and happier customers! Hugs all around!

We have big plans coming up for our cloud (we know we keep saying that!) but we’re talking about 10 times the performance, faster provisioning times and even more high availability options. Stay tuned!

Also, we hate 404s and we didn’t want to break the browsing experience for our customers so with our new knowledge base, we implemented a system to make sure no pages end up lost, we’ve also open-sourced this code so check it out on GitHub.