Re: [mv] some efficiency boost questions that might help all

[Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Ryan Hertz <rhertz@gyb.baits.com>     ******

At 04:38 PM 2/4/2000 , you wrote:
>******    message to minivend-users from "Michael Schwartz" 
><michael@panamacom.com>     ******
>
>Hello!!!
>
>After having two catalogs online, one of them a portal (no selling), and the
>other one a virtual store, i have a few statistics to share hoping that some
>of you had the same experience and might be able to give me some tips.
>
>The virtual store gets aprox. 40 unique visitors a day.  The portal is
>starting up, so it gets 250 (increasing) unique visitors a day.
>I have a Pentium iii, with a good connection (oc-12), and it has 128M
>Ram.....(which i think should be more), running on Red Hat Linux 6.0, Apache
>Web Server....i provide the hosting.

Very nice!  But you couldn't possibly be using all of an OC-12, that's like 
12 un-multiplexed strands of fiber optic.

>I am using the built in database feature in minivend, not mySQL.
>The virtual store has 1000 items, the portal has around 1000 items also, but
>separated in different tables to create dynamic pages.....
>The CATEGORY in the products tables in both are INDEX, so i use
>Dict_look....which supposedly is faster, but TEXT searches are also used.
>The mayority of the site (both) is dynamic.  A few pages are static... (help
>files, and such).

I may be wrong, but I don't think you'd see much performance gain by going 
to mySQL for a relatively small db.  Using INDEX is a very good idea.

>The server load average right now is around 0.26 ( above 2.00 is not good. )
>Sometimes, when the page is loading, it takes a few seconds to load the
>bottom part (just think of the simple catalog demo)....logobar and menubar
>loads rather quickly, the rest takes a few seconds...sometimes more.  Im not
>sure if its the bandwidth of my local ISP or the program.....feedback??

Seems to me that you have a fairly stout box, you may want to investigate 
your coding efficiency to try and eek out a performance boost.  I stopped 
using MiniVend's "built-in" page design functions and went to modular 
design using [include]'ed files.  I figure that the more MiniVend tags in a 
page, the slower it will be.  [Include] seems clean and fast.

You have plenty of bandwidth -- that is, for a lean site, you may have a 
lot of images or imbedded video, I dunno.   Really the best answer for 
efficiency is static pages.   I initially had some troubles getting static 
to work so I passed on it, but my server load has not forced the issue, 
_yet_.  So far, so good.


>Having all this in mind, i want to run a few more catalogs, for a few other
>virtual stores, in the same server.The next one coming up has 36,000 items
>and im sure it will have a traffic of around 600-800 unique visitors a day.

36,000 items will probably necessitate the use of SQL - at least in terms 
of ease-of-management.


>Now, a few more questions....should i be able to run these 3 catalogs
>without problems? do you think i will or i need more ram right now?  Is it
>better to use MySQL server instead of minivend's own?  When using dynamic
>pages, is it better to use variables set up in catalog.cfg, like
>__MENUBAR__, or is it better or the same to use [include]? (i know static is
>the best)
>What other tips you can give me for improving processing efficiency??

I don't know how MiniVend/PERL would be using RAM, but I know that SQL 
engines tend to eat RAM (makes them faster).  What does your 'top' tell 
you?  Oh, and is that 0.26 average the 'instant' average, or the long load 
average?  I jump out to 0.20ish but my long average is 0.01 with 200 unique 
in the store and running 5 other sites with similar but static page traffic 
on a P2 400.  'free -kt' would tell you how you're using your RAM (before 
you go buy more, but heck, it's cheap).


>Thanks, i think this will help a lot of people.....including me  :-)
>
>Regards
>
>
>-
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Ryan Hertz                                              tel  800-645-BAIT
Webmaster                                               fax  520-645-2588
Advertising Director                            http://www.insideline.net
Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits, Inc.            http://www.yamamoto.baits.com

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