[consulting] Sluggishness Concern - thoughts on Drupal problem solving

[Dave Maddox]

Hi Sam,

Thoughts on Drupal problem solving (no real fix for Sam here, sorry):

 From my experience with Drupal, it's a great idea to ask before you 
start drilling down to root cause(s), because often the answer involves 
a side effect or configuration that isn't directly related  to where the 
problem manifests anyway. Big systems are like that, and your offering 
the 40,000 foot view with the key changes involved is a great start, 
though naming the modules involved might trigger an idea in someone also.

Conversely, if you think you know where the problem is, you could easily 
waste your time and others' hunting in the wrong woods. Drupal is 
Zen-like to me, a strange balance of computer science and ineffable, 
evolving Drupal concepts. As in Zen, wisdom is in knowing that you don't 
know, and keeping your mind open about solutions. Either that, or 
following a cookbook.

Nine times out of ten when I head to the web with Drupal questions I 
have ruled out (as best I reasonably can) the easy answers, PHP code 
issues, etc. My next solutions involve either talking with folks at a 
meetup or trying keywords as I search through Drupal.org and other 
sources of wisdom. The trend away from 'Drupalisms' has helped those 
searches immensely. Learning Drupal for me is better seen as an 
apprenticeship, the real wisdom is almost an oral tradition!

One question I ask, as a relative Drupal newbie, which often elicits 
just the answer I needed: is there anything others are assuming I've 
done that I haven't? It's a challenge for the experienced as habits fold 
in and often aren't on any checklist.

At a LAMP meeting I attend we have the benefit of an ex-MySQL employee 
who has the big picture of the database/cache layers in his head and he 
can usually see the problem right then and there. Out of courtesy 
perhaps, he rarely asks about application design issues, just 
implementation, so there are lots of assumptions in the process.

 From talking with our phone support folks when I worked at HP, I 
learned a bit about the other side of problem solving - step by step, no 
assumptions. I'm generally more intuitive at first, so I forget the 
value of deliberateness. If you can find someone with the patience to 
review your configuration and design even in abstraction, that might 
help too.

One of the first times such a review paid off for me, something simple 
as displaying text - I forget the specific issue - using the method I 
had chosen inadvertantly invoked a huge chunk of code in Drupal, costing 
a lot of performance! I had no idea of the internals at that point, and 
to more experienced Drupal folks this was a classic newbie mistake 
though it was far from obvious. If something in Drupal has changed which 
your code has tripped over, the general opinions that 'nothing has 
changed' wouldn't help. If you're doing something 'clever' folks working 
on Drupal Core might not have thought of you. :-) Experience beats 
theory in this case, just like the old mantra 'it should just work' has 
become a running joke at many places I've worked.

Here's hoping your answer is simple, but until you find it, it sure isn't!

Best,
Dave Maddox

Sam Cohen a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> Sorry if this if off-topic ...
>
> I've got a new client that I'm implementing a solution for, but based 
> on the number of modules needed, I'm a bit concerned about 
> sluggishness -- something I've been hearing complaints from my clients 
> about with Drupal 6. 
>
> All my Drupal 5 sites work really fast.  But the 4 Drupal 6 sites I've 
> set up are all sluggish, especially for logged in users. 
>
> A dedicated server is definitely a possibility if the client's 
> business works out, but in the beginning they want to start with a 
> shared host.
>
> So my question is, has anyone found any shared hosts that a 
> heavily-module-loaded Drupal 6 site can really fly on? 
>
> I've tried 3 or 4 hosts by now, and all seem equally slow.
>
> Or is just luck of the draw?  You get on a shared server without a lot 
> of other sites and the site works great.  If it's a busy server, 
> you're out of luck?
>
> Thanks,
> Sam 
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