Tips to speed up Magento

Magento 2 Performance
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Craig

Just catching up on some of your videos (always fun to watch, even if I think I know the subject) …

I started writing initially in the comments section of your “tips to speed up Magento”, then realised that we may end up having a discussion so I’ve moved to the forum instead.

Magento hosts

I agree that choosing the right host can speed up your store. I did try out Nexcess but found them to be expensive for what they offer. For my production site, I’m using simpleservers.co.uk.

Except for the cheapest shared hosting plan, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone anyhow as the bandwidth and disk space are too low, they offer 1 click install via Installatron as well as a couple of account backup options from cPanel without having to resort to SSH. As a third backup option, Installatron also allows you to backup your Magento installation via ftp to another server. Or clone it, for example, once you’ve gone live so that you can have a separate development instance.

I suggest approaching them to see if they will issue you with a promo code for 1 month free trials.

I have to confess, it’s a bit of a love hate relationship with simpleservers. They market themselves as Magento experts with servers optimised for Magento. That is probably true. Whenever I run into issues, support has been fantastic. However, I’ve tested a few different hosts and, some stuff that is standard with other hosts (such as setting up cron jobs when they install Magento for you), simple has failed to do automatically and requires you to either do yourself or raise a support ticket. If I recall correctly, Nexcess sets up cron jobs for you when they install Magento. With Nexcess though, 1 click installation is not available for their SIP 100 plan.

As well as the standard 3 cron jobs, Nexcess also set up a cron job for log rotation. simple uses a proprietory OS and, initially I couldn’t get my head around reconciling the info I found on the web with their directory structure (being non-techie and all). So I asked support for help with setting up a logrotate cron. Their reply wasn’t very helpful. That was a first and I probably had just caught the support guy on a bad day. Anyway, I sort of managed to figure out how to do it myself, though not completely. So far, I’ve just managed to figure out how to set up logrotate.conf file and run it via SSH. It’s a start.

Incidentally, log rotation might be something you want to put on your list for advanced ways of speeding up the Magento store.

The other host I’m using is siteground. Being a big host, I didn’t think they would be too optimised for Magento. But they offer a cheap trial (with 30 day cancellation) so I gave them a go since I was running into a few teething issues with simpleservers and wanted another host to compare with as a baseline. I have to admit, I’ve been really impressed. I’m on the Grow Big plan which is only £3.95 a month for the first 12 months (intro price). I now wish I had committed to 24 months at that price. Their service has been outstanding and the servers are quite fast too.

Increasing PHP memory limit

You said that you can only edit .htaccess via SSH. You failed to mention that you can also edit via File Manager from cPanel. At least with both of the hosts I’m using and, IIRC, also with Nexcess.

More advanced ways to speed up Magento

While we’re on this topic, do you plan on doing a follow-up for advanced users?

Cheers

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Hi @magetester,

Magento hosts

Thanks for sharing your experiences with SimpleServers and SiteGround. You’ll often hear me talking about DigitalOcean and Nexcess for hosting. And that’s because in this “game” it’s very beneficial to keep your variables limited. Plus, showing someone how to do one task with one host can differ with another - And that just makes writing tutorials much more expensive (in time/money).

I lean towards DigitalOcean because I get to set my own server exactly they way I want because I get root access to my own dedicated instance. Obviously, the downside to this is needing to know what you’re doing. You break it, you fix it. (Great for experimenting and developing)

I also lean towards Nexcess because I get a consistent level of service and support. The affordable packages use Shared Hosting so I don’t get root access and have to rely on support-tickets to get some things done. It also means I can’t tweak the server how I want. But it’s a great solution for anyone not wanting to mess about with stuff and worry about running a business instead. (Great for just getting started)

Although, technically you are right in that you don’t install it yourself. During the checkout you specify which Magento version you want installed, and they prepare it for you.

SIP-100
SIP-1001192×601 49.5 KB

Fair play. I’ve never had to do this myself. Probably something worth me learning one day. I’ll mention it in a future video.

I use SiteGround myself, for hosting my Wordpress site. I’ve also found their services to be on-point. But I’ve never used them for something as advanced as M2. You’ll have to let me know how your installation holds up in production.

Increasing PHP memory limit

I did mention it in passing, but I didn’t bother showing how to do that because a) I was already in SSH b) I gave an example how to ask for it in a support-ticket. Plus I would have shown it on FileZilla because I don’t use cPanel.

More advanced ways to speed up Magento

I do, but it won’t be for a while I imagine. I may wait for M2.3 release, but I’m not sure. It’s much more complex and controversial and would only apply to viewers who have a server with root access.

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I don’t plan on using the siteground installation for the production site. I originally signed up because I was having some issues with simpleservers and wanted another host to compare with - to establish a baseline, so to speak. I did also have a SIP100 account but that was costing about the same as simpleservers and I didn’t want to be paying that much. That’s how I came across siteground. So far, it has been great - good hosting features and almost as fast as simpleservers - but I’ll only use it as a staging environment. Even that’s not a perfect plan because I ought to be staging on the same server configuration but, like I said, it’s useful as a comparison to establish whether any issues I encounter are Magento issues or a hosting/server issues.

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