Hey I’m currently a Backlight 2 user who is thinking about upgrading to BL3 but I’ve had issues before with the loading speed of my main website. Now that I’m considering upgrading my hopes are that this will fix the problem for me, but I don’t know what the actual issue is with the slow loading speeds. Now currently I’m setting up a new BL2 site, a very simple one and right away I’m getting these same issues with a more or less plain install. I know that the support for BL2 might have expired but is not to keen on upgrading if this won’t fix my problem!
I feel that a loading time of 33s for a plain website just after install is beyond slow, see below:
I’ve been in contact with my provider regarding this in the past with no luck and for my main site also had you guys (i think it was Matthew) back in fall of 2019 but with no luck. I’ve sort of accepted this fact since I didn’t have energy enough to move the website or digg further into the issue! But now with a plain new website setup and the fact that BL3 now is out I see my chance to fix this, maybe!?
Can I expect this to get fixed with upgrading to BL3?
Hi @daniel_asplund, slow performance like this is an indicator that something’s wrong with your host. Either their servers are underspecced, there are too many accounts on the same server or there is a configuration issue of some sort. Backlight 3 does improve performance but won’t solve the kind of performance issues you’re seeing.
Hey thanks for the reply! Even thou this might be correct I’m not 100 convinced with this… the provider I’m using before was highly ranked as one of the best in Sweden and is now part of one of the bigger ISP in Europe, might be correct that its on the service side but if it was as simple as a capacity issue you would think this issue would not last for years but only for a short period of time with high number of new customers or so! And what ISP is today not able to run a simple website with only some css and plain html/php with no graphics at all… my guess is that the problem is more complicated than this… but I’m sort of stuck in the middle a bit here! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about your product but for me to change provider would take me weeks of work and is not something I’m to keen on doing! So any other idéas or things to try would be great!
Looking at your site with the ?performance flag ticked, the main back-end processing is fast. All of the main processing items listed are within single-digit milliseconds. My guess is that the web server itself is slow in responding to requests. Have you tried taking this up with technical support?
Backlight performance is very good across our entire customer base, bar for a very few cases such as yours. So if you look at the Backlight software as a commonality, performance issues can be attributed to the host.
Hi, it was Binero before now they are part of a bigger group called websupport. Now you might be correct with the fact that it might be on the host side, but the blogpost you where refering to is more than 9 years old! I wouldn’t think thats a very reliable source any more! …
But I did contact their support again yesterday and hope to hear something from them soon! I’ll let you know if there is any change. But I guess then the same basics are behind BL2 and BL3 and that the response times should not change very much with an upgrade!?
Might be other reasons to upgrade so I might just still do that but then I don’t expect it to fix this issue!
In our experience, consolidation and acquisition of hosts is more likely to result in poorer service over time than better.
I am well aware that the blog post is over a decade old. I’m just indicating that your host is not infallible and the post provides insight into the type of solution that may still be applicable.
BL3 will not solve your problems, though it does provide relative performance improvements over BL2 (e.g. 200ms to 100ms for a request, but not 5 seconds to 100ms as you might hope in your situation) and we do recommend it as a major and supported upgrade over BL2.
Hi again. Regarding the hosting you might be correct but still something is odd when a brand new site using BL2 is running slow, nothing but all the standard settings from a fresh install with only 4 pages created. Anyhow the response I’ve got from them is that it seems like the account “hits the roof” in regards to the number of processes the CMS is running. Also they are refering to this:
apache-04-11.log-20210108:Jan 8 20:00:56 apache-04-11 httpd.worker[694233]: [warn] [client 83.172.99.4] mod_fcgid: can’t apply process slot for /storage/configuration/wrappers/10/204810/dittbrollopsfoto.se/php-wrapper
apache-04-11.log-20210108:Jan 8 20:01:32 apache-04-11 httpd.worker[694233]: [warn] [client 83.172.99.4] mod_fcgid: can’t apply process slot for /storage/configuration/wrappers/10/204810/dittbrollopsfoto.se/php-wrapper
The something that’s odd is that your host isn’t providing a performant service.
Backlight is a database-driven CMS, so does need to do more work than serving up static HTML and resources. However that work is not excessive, and Backlight has several measures to make things run quickly. Your host should be able to provide a service that responds in a matter of milliseconds, not seconds.
I do not understand their comment about multiple processes. A single request should only use a single process on the server. That process may be one that’s already running as a service, depending on how PHP is configured.
Some things you could try:
If your control panel provides options for PHP running as Fast CGI or not, can you let me know which mode it’s running in and try the other mode.
If your control panel provides an option for the PHP version can you likewise report what it is, and try a different version. In general, the newer the better, but it may be the case that your host’s specific implementation of specific versions affects the performance in ways that negates this. E.g, if 7.4 runs poorly but 7.3 runs well.
Looks like the new 7.4.11 make the performance quite a bit better! Don’t know what you should expect in loading time on a plain more or less just installed fresh BL2 site? 3.3s is getting to the point which I start to find acceptable! Tried the same thing with my other website www.sverigesnationalparker.nu but it gives me an error if I change to 7.4.11
@daniel_asplundThe Turning Gate runs on Backlight. However long it takes you to load our demonstration galleries, is roughly what you should expect for loading time on your own site. Click through some of the links in our Showcase forum for additional perspective.
@Matthew - Thats what I’m thinking as well, loading a fresh setup BL2 page with not a single image should all be done in less than 1s I would imagine. Problem is what to tell and convince my service provider and how to pinpoint the issue!
Hey, well the “looking for a new host” trick is something I wanna save for a slightly later date! And I’m not to keen on actually going that way either, but who knows! I’ve asked them again if they have any more suggestions and trying to drive this issue forward. Is there any list of all recommended settings on a webserver for BL2 to run optimal, like php version and configuration that I could forward to them to see if they have everything turned on etc!?
I’m also curious on what actually goes on in BL2 and the server when Gtmetrix runs a test. On the site I have the biggest issues with is www.sverigesnationalparker.nu
The first landningsite site is around 1.29mb and has an image that is 139kb (maybe a bit to big but for sure nothing mad) On this URL: http://www.sverigesnationalparker.nu/backlight/designer/page/image/15?v=93
The CMS or Server takes a total of 33s to load that? What is actually happening from a server/php/cms perspektiv here? Is there basicly a request asking the server to show the image and thats it or is it more things going on?
I feel like we’re going around in circles here. If your host can provide a decent service then that’s great. Otherwise, consider jumping ship.
The host needs to have enough ram and cpu allocated for the expected traffic across all customers on that server. If your site was the only one on that server then even the most modest specifications would result in fast response times. I’m talking even a basic five year old $30 Raspberry Pi server.
There aren’t settings that I can suggest. This is your host’s business to be familiar with and set properly.
On your question about what takes 33 seconds. Your server is like a black box. The time spent handling requests on a network, web server, i/o and actual PHP execution by Backlight can’t be differentiated by an external service or browser. All I can offer is the ?performance flag, which indicates that the PHP and Backlight performance was fine.
Alright… well I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, they say they can’t do anything and its getting to a similar point here talking about being stuck in the middle!
I guess I’ll have to move somewhere else, suppose it will take me a weeks work or so but anyway as long as it will work… any recommendations for hosting for a few sites? Preferably a EU company?
When it comes to transfering a site unless there is a WP involved can I just copy everything over from one “public_html” to the next one?
I believe that many hosts will move everything for you when you move to their hosting.
When you find hosting you like (I’m using Bluehost, but it’s US based), look through their site for an article on switching hosting.
I switched to Bluehost years ago and if I remember correctly, it was pretty easy.
I’ve been using Hostmonster for years and find them to be really responsive 24/7 to help solve issues, but again they are US based. I just looked and they do offer a Website transfer service.
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… im just the middle man here! 