This is a step by step guide on how to set up your own unmanaged server or vps to run as a WordPress Performance server environment. Using this setup you will have the ability to host a large WordPress Multisite set up or numerous single installs. This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of using SSH via the Mac Terminal app or Putty for Windows and requires an unmanaged dedicated server or VPS hosting account with either the 32 or 64 bit Debian kernal available.

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Read the full article: WordPress Performance – Debian “squeeze” with Nginx, APC and PHP from the Dotdeb repos Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

WordPress SEO expert and developer Joost de Valk has finally released the long awaited WordPress SEO Plugin. The new plugin is still in beta and is being actively updated and supported and most of the initial bugs have been resolved. I have been using it since the first beta release and feel confident enough in it to start using it on client production sites.

The plugin combines Yoast’s previous SEO plugins, Robots Meta, Yoast Breadcrumbs, RSS Footer, and Canonical URL’s along with XML Sitemap, News Sitemap, Rich Snippet, Focus Keywords, SEO Titles & Meta Description features into one true “All In One” SEO plugin.

Another features is that WordPress SEO imports your title and meta description data from Headspace and All in One SEO making it easy to make the change from another plugin. There are a lot of other great features that are described in full detail on Yoast’s Tweaking Websites Blog

Read the full article: WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

I ran a simple test against Nginx v0.5.22 and Apache v2.2.8 using ab (Apache’s benchmarking tool). During the tests, I monitored the system with vmstat and top. The results indicate that Nginx outperforms Apache when serving static content. Both servers performed best with a concurrency of 100. Apache used four worker processes (threaded mode), 30% CPU and 17MB of memory to serve 6,500 requests per second. Nginx used one worker, 15% CPU and 1MB of memory to serve 11,500 requests per second.
–The Linix Journal

This article describes how to set up Nginx as a reverse proxy static cache for WordPress. This web server stack will enable you to scale single or multiple WordPress installations on a medium to low end VPS or dedicated server. It is also the same stack this website runs on along with about 10 other WordPress sites on an unmanaged Xen VPS with only 768M of Ram.

WordPress Performance Plugin Stack

This setup requires Dan Collis-Puro’s Nginx proxy cache integrator plugin and works great with W3 Total Cache

Our W3 Total Cache setup is page caching with disk enhanced, minify with disk and APC as an object and database cache. By setting page cache and minify to disk they will be served by Nginx.

We are also utilizing W3T’s great self hosted CDN feature and have another domain on this same server with 4 cnames pointing to it.

Browsers can only download a few files at once, only 4 in some cases. Pipelining is a technique whereby aliases (subdomains for example) of your server are used to allow your browser to increase the practical limit of files that can be downloaded in parallel. Doing so maximizes the throughput of the your internet connection and allows the browser to render a page faster. W3TC takes care of managing these files transparently once DNS CNAMEs (aliases) and subdomains are properly configured.
–Frederick Townes, Author W3 Total Cache

How to configure Nginx to serve static files and pass the heavy PHP and WordPress lifting to Apache

The problem with using Apache alone is that it opens up a connection and hits php on every request even for static files. This wastes connections because Apache will keep them open and when you have lots of traffic your connections will be bogged down even if they are not being used.

By default Apache listens for requests on port 80 which is the default web port. First we are going to make changes to our Apache conf and virtual hosts files to listen on port 8080.

Apache Config

httpd.conf

set KeepAlive to off

ports.conf

NameVirtualHost *:8080
Listen 8080

Per Site Virtual Host

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8080>
     ServerAdmin info@yoursite.com
     ServerName yoursite.com
     ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
     DocumentRoot /srv/www/yoursite.com/public_html/
     ErrorLog /srv/www/yoursite.com/logs/error.log
     CustomLog /srv/www/yoursite.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

You should also install mod_rpaf so your logs will contain the real ip addresses of your visitors. If not your logs will have 127.0.0.1 as the originating ip address.

Nginx Config

On Debian you can use the repositories to install but they only contain version 0.6.33. To install a later version you have to add the lenny backports packages

$ nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line to the file deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main

$ nano /etc/apt/preferences

Add the following to the file:

Package: nginx
Pin: release a=lenny-backports
Pin-Priority: 999

Issue the following commands to import the key from backports.org to verify packages and update your system’s package database:

wget -O - http://backports.org/debian/archive.key | apt-key add -
$ apt-get update


Now install with apt-get

apt-get install nginx

This is much easier than compiling from source.

Nginx conf and server files config

nginx.conf

user www-data;
worker_processes  4;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    client_body_temp_path /var/lib/nginx/body 1 2;
    gzip_buffers 32 8k;
    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    tcp_nodelay        on;

    gzip  on;

  gzip_comp_level   6;
  gzip_http_version 1.0;
  gzip_min_length   0;
  gzip_types        text/html text/css image/x-icon
        application/x-javascript application/javascript text/javascript application/atom+xml application/xml ;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Now you will need to set up your Nginx virtual hosting. I like to use the sites-enabled method with each v host sym linked to a file in the sites-available directory.

mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-available
$ mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
$ touch /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourservername.conf
$ touch /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.conf
$ ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
$ nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.conf


default.conf

Note:

The static cache settings in the following files will only work if the Nginx proxy cache integrator plugin is enabled.

proxy_cache_path  /var/lib/nginx/cache  levels=1:2   keys_zone=staticfilecache:180m  max_size=500m;
proxy_temp_path /var/lib/nginx/proxy;
proxy_connect_timeout 30;
proxy_read_timeout 120;
proxy_send_timeout 120;

#IMPORTANT - this sets the basic cache key that's used in the static file cache.
proxy_cache_key "$scheme://$host$request_uri";

upstream wordpressapache {
        #The upstream apache server. You can have many of these and weight them accordingly,
        #allowing nginx to function as a caching load balancer
        server 127.0.0.1:8080 weight=1 fail_timeout=120s;
}

Per WordPress site conf (For multi site you will only need one vhost)

server {
        #Only cache 200 responses, and for a default of 20 minutes.
        proxy_cache_valid 200 20m;

        #Listen to your public IP
        listen 80;

        #Probably not needed, as the proxy will pass back the host in "proxy_set_header"
        server_name www.yoursite.com yoursite.com;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/yoursite.proxied.log;

        # "combined" matches apache's concept of "combined". Neat.
        access_log  /var/log/apache2/nginx-access.log combined;
        # Set the real IP.
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;

        # Set the hostname
        proxy_set_header Host $host;

        #Set the forwarded-for header.
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

        location / {
                        # If logged in, don't cache.
                        if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author_|wordpress_(?!test_cookie)|wp-postpass_" ) {
                                set $do_not_cache 1;
                        }
                        proxy_cache_key "$scheme://$host$request_uri $do_not_cache";
                        proxy_cache staticfilecache;
                        proxy_pass http://wordpressapache;
        }

        location ~* wp\-.*\.php|wp\-admin {
                        # Don't static file cache admin-looking things.
                        proxy_pass http://wordpressapache;
        }

        location ~* \.(jpg|png|gif|jpeg|css|js|mp3|wav|swf|mov|doc|pdf|xls|ppt|docx|pptx|xlsx)$ {
                        # Cache static-looking files for 120 minutes, setting a 10 day expiry time in the HTTP header,
                        # whether logged in or not (may be too heavy-handed).
                        proxy_cache_valid 200 120m;
                        expires 864000;
                        proxy_pass http://wordpressapache;
                        proxy_cache staticfilecache;
        }

        location ~* \/[^\/]+\/(feed|\.xml)\/? {
 # Cache RSS looking feeds for 45 minutes unless logged in.
                        if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author_|wordpress_(?!test_cookie)|wp-postpass_" ) {
                                set $do_not_cache 1;
                        }
                        proxy_cache_key "$scheme://$host$request_uri $do_not_cache";
                        proxy_cache_valid 200 45m;
                        proxy_cache staticfilecache;
                        proxy_pass http://wordpressapache;
        }

        location = /50x.html {
                root   /var/www/nginx-default;
        }

        # No access to .htaccess files.
        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny  all;
        }

        }

Self Hosted CDN conf

For your self hosted CDN conf you only need to set it up to serve static files without the proxy pass

server {

        proxy_cache_valid 200 20m;
        listen 80;
        server_name yourcdndomain.com;
        access_log   /srv/www/yourcdndomain.com/logs/access.log;
        root   /srv/www/yourcdndomain.com/public_html/;

 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;

      location ~* \.(jpg|png|gif|jpeg|css|js|mp3|wav|swf|mov|doc|pdf|xls|ppt|docx|pptx|xlsx)$ {
                                # Cache static-looking files for 120 minutes, setting a 10 day expiry time in the HTTP header,
                                # whether logged in or not (may be too heavy-handed).

                                proxy_cache_valid 200 120m;
                        expires 7776000;
                        proxy_cache staticfilecache;
                }

location = /50x.html {
                root   /var/www/nginx-default;
        }

 # No access to .htaccess files.
        location ~ /\.ht {
          deny  all;
        }

    }

Now start the servers

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
$/etc/init.d/nginx start


The Benchmark Results

To test this setup and demonstrate the potential I ran Apache Bench on the home page of this site and set it to make 5000 requests at a concurrency level of 100. The results:

 Requests per second:    8242.83 [#/sec] (mean)

While running the benchmark I had htop open in another window and as you can see by the screen shot below, Nginx only opened 3 worker processes and barely made a blip on memory or cpu.

ab -n 5000 -c 100 http://wp-performance.com/


[root@xxxxxxxxx ~]#ab -n 5000 -c 100 http://wp-performance.com/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking wp-performance.com (be patient)
Completed 500 requests
Completed 1000 requests
Completed 1500 requests
Completed 2000 requests
Completed 2500 requests
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 3500 requests
Completed 4000 requests
Completed 4500 requests
Completed 5000 requests
Finished 5000 requests

Server Software:        nginx/0.7.65
Server Hostname:        wp-performance.com
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        9348 bytes

Concurrency Level:      100
Time taken for tests:   0.607 seconds
Complete requests:      5000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      49172298 bytes
HTML transferred:       46870872 bytes
Requests per second:    8242.83 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       12.132 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.121 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          79163.82 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    1   0.9      1       9
Processing:     3   11   1.8     11      61
Waiting:        1    5   2.1      5      54
Total:          5   12   1.7     12      61

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%     12
  66%     12
  75%     13
  80%     13
  90%     14
  95%     15
  98%     15
  99%     16
 100%     61 (longest request)

Read the full article: Nginx Reverse Proxy Cache for WordPress and Apache Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

Read the full article: Shortcode in a Shortcode Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

//this is some code

Read the full article: Gallery Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

I recently answered a question over at WordPress Answers, Stack Exchanges new WordPress question and answer site, about best practices for using a caching plugin with a shared host.

Not all WordPress users are able to host their blog or website on a private server or VPS and need a way to speed up their websites. There are a few great WordPress caching plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. Both plugins are very popular, well supported by their authors and do a good job of caching.

WP Super Cache is developed and supported by Donncha O Caoimh who is a member of the Automattic team and a core WordPress contributor.

W3 Total Cache was originally developed for Mashable.com by their CTO, Frederick Townes .

W3 Total Cache is much more than a caching plugin. Along with page caching, W3 also does object caching, database caching, minifies and combines css and js files and also has built in CDN (Content Delivery Network) support. This is the only plugin available that tackles all the best practices of High Performance Websites

Continue Reading

Read the full article: Increase Page Loading Speed by 300% with W3 Total Cache Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

APC is a free and open opcode cache for PHP. Its goal is to provide a free, open, and robust framework for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. Installing APC using the built in PECL package is a very convenient method but presents challenges installing a CPanel managed server.

The Solution:
Compile APC from source using the latest stable version http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.19.tgz

Instructions

cd /usr/local/src && wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.19.tgz && tar -xzf APC-3.0.19.tgz && cd APC-3.0.19

Now you will have APC downloaded untarred and you will be in the configure directory.

phpize && ./configure --enable-apc --enable-apc-mmap --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs --with-php-config=/usr/local/bin/php-config && make && make install

This will configure APC and install it in your extension directory. no-debug-non-zts-20090626 will be the name of the extension directory if your running PHP 5.3. If you are running PHP 5.2 your extension directory will be no-debug-non-zts-20060613

cd /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626

dir

You should see a file named apc.so in that directory

If there are no errors listed and apc.so exist in the right directory then nano /usr/local/lib/php.ini
you should see extension=apc.so somewhere. If not add it then copy the settings from wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/ini/apc.ini and add them below extension=apc.so control x and save php.ini then service httpd restart

php -r 'phpinfo();' | grep 'apc'

If you get output from that last command then it is installed and working and you can go to one of your web pages and make sure it loads.

Adding the APC GUI
To be able to view your APC caching statistics move the the apc.php file from /usr/local/src/APC-3.0.10/acp.php to somewhere in your /public_html and you can access it from a browser.
You will need to set an admin username and password to the apc.php script which can be done by opening the file in an editor and replacing the default username and password at the top of the script

Another good resource for installing APC on a WHM/Cpanel server can be found at http://www.brettbrewer.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=70

Read the full article: APC Alternative PHP Cache on a CPanel Server Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

The plugin uses the WordPress Shortcode API to add the slider to posts or pages. Simply add the shortcode and specify the arguments and your slider will be added.

Read the full article: Shortcode Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

The original jQuery was changed to be compatible in no conflict mode with WordPress’s built in jQuery.

Read the full article: No Conflict Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site

The slider can be navigated using tabs that are dynamically labeled using the title of the post. This post is titled “Tabs”

Read the full article: Tabs Original post from: WP-Performance - Just another C3M Digital Server Network site