back end performace

[libby]

Hi
I am using Joomla 1.0.12 for a fairly large news intensive site. Several articles are added to the site everyday by three people using the same network. The front-end loads quickly but the the back-end is very, very slow. I access the admin section from a different location and it is fairly quick to load and save articles there.
I was wondering if the caching of articles could be causing the terrible performace for network users. Does anyone have any ideas?

Also, does anyone have experience with large sites (+5000 content items) is there an optimum number? When should older articles be archived? Are archived articles still accessible via the search facility? And is it possible to assign a different template to archived material?

Lots of questions I know, but I would really apprecaite some advice on administering a monster site.
Thanks
Libby

[Ubik Liryc]

Hi Libby,
it's also a problem we have.

Our website is run by 50 managers in 25 countries we have more than 19000 articles, 1000 modules, 50 menus and thousands of images in hundreds of folders.
We had no problem until we upgrade from Mambo to Joomla 1.0.11. Since then some parts of the backend are real slow.

We are still running some tests, but so far we think it's coming from the images/stories folders. As only the articles/components which needs to load the media part are slow (5s to create a new article with a fresh joomla installation on our server and sometimes up to 5 min with our site!).

Definitely something is really slow to load at the beginning of the php page.

I would also appreciate any sort of advice.

Thanks

[RussW]

Have you tried turning on debug to see what sort of SQL queries your site is making to the MySQL database? Have you looked in to the MySQL performance (slow queries) and the sticky discussions at the top of the foum here?

[libby]

I have looked at the sql queries and they are fine. In fact the front-end of the site is fine. It's just the back-end that is slow

[ircmaxell]

I think he is not talking about number of queries, but how optimized they are.  More than likely, that is the problem (MySQL's performance starting to slip because of a large record set...

[libby]

I'm a little comfused between the process of reducing the number of queries (which I have done) and optimising them?? I typically have 17 queries with back-end pages (as below) - any suggestions about how I optimise them?


17 queries executed

1
SELECT template
FROM jos_templates_menu
WHERE client_id = 1
AND menuid = 0
2
DELETE FROM jos_session
WHERE time 0
3
UPDATE jos_session
SET time = '1191501356'
WHERE session_id = '84da053ec827ea0b49b5ae98ed518a58'
4
SELECT COUNT( session_id )
FROM jos_session
WHERE session_id = '84da053ec827ea0b49b5ae98ed518a58'
AND username = 'admin'
AND userid = 62
5
SELECT *
FROM jos_sections
WHERE id = '1'
6
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM jos_content AS c
LEFT JOIN jos_categories AS cc ON cc.id = c.catid
LEFT JOIN jos_sections AS s ON s.id = c.sectionid
WHERE c.state >= 0 AND c.catid = cc.id AND cc.section = s.id AND s.scope = 'content' AND c.sectionid = 1 AND c.catid = 88
7
SELECT c.*, g.name AS groupname, cc.name, u.name AS editor, f.content_id AS frontpage, s.title AS section_name, v.name AS author
FROM jos_content AS c
LEFT JOIN jos_categories AS cc ON cc.id = c.catid
LEFT JOIN jos_sections AS s ON s.id = c.sectionid
LEFT JOIN jos_groups AS g ON g.id = c.access
LEFT JOIN jos_users AS u ON u.id = c.checked_out
LEFT JOIN jos_users AS v ON v.id = c.created_by
LEFT JOIN jos_content_frontpage AS f ON f.content_id = c.id
WHERE c.state >= 0 AND c.catid = cc.id AND cc.section = s.id AND s.scope = 'content' AND c.sectionid = 1 AND c.catid = 8
8
ORDER BY cc.ordering, cc.title, c.ordering
LIMIT 308
SELECT cc.id AS value, cc.title AS text, section
FROM jos_categories AS cc
INNER JOIN jos_sections AS s ON s.id = cc.section
WHERE cc.section = '1'
ORDER BY s.ordering, cc.ordering
9
SELECT id AS value, title AS text
FROM jos_sections
WHERE published = 1
ORDER BY ordering
10
SELECT c.created_by, u.name
FROM jos_content AS c
INNER JOIN jos_sections AS s ON s.id = c.sectionid
LEFT JOIN jos_users AS u ON u.id = c.created_by
WHERE c.state != -1
AND c.state != -2
GROUP BY u.name
ORDER BY u.name
11
SELECT a.id, a.title, a.name
FROM jos_sections AS a
WHERE a.scope = 'content'
GROUP BY a.id
ORDER BY a.ordering
12
SELECT params
FROM jos_modules
WHERE module = 'mod_mainmenu'
ORDER BY title
13
SELECT menutype
FROM jos_menu
GROUP BY menutype
ORDER BY menutype
14
SELECT *
FROM jos_components
WHERE name != 'frontpage'
AND name != 'media manager'
ORDER BY ordering, name
15
SELECT id, title, module, position, content, showtitle, params
FROM jos_modules AS m
WHERE m.published = 1
AND m.position = 'header'
AND m.client_id = 1
ORDER BY m.ordering
16
SELECT COUNT( session_id )
FROM jos_session
WHERE session_id != '84da053ec827ea0b49b5ae98ed518a58'
17
SELECT id, title, module, position, content, showtitle, params
FROM jos_modules AS m
WHERE m.published = 1
AND m.position = 'debug'
AND m.client_id = 1
ORDER BY m.ordering

[ircmaxell]

Well, just from the way you describe the site, I can tell you this.  Your problem queries will be the following.
#6
#7
#10

Those will be the slowest...

To test, open up phpMyAdmin, select your database, then click on "SQL" to execute a query.  Copy one of them, and Put "EXPLAIN " before it.  Then execute.  For info on what that all means, see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/explain.html

[salty]

HI libby,
Everybody here is great and has there own specialization!
your images folder is most likely causing the problem, if you clean them up have roughly not more than 30 images in one folder (completely depending on your hosting and connection sometimes 12 images is max sometimes 50 is fine) than you'll probably have a much faster site. This has very liitle to do with jomla and much more with web design in general considering your connection , server space, and server hardware / connection.
Good luck,

[fotisevangelou]

Quick tips...

- Use a database optimization component (or do it manually via phpmyadmin) like SM2 DB Health Check:
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/ ... Itemid,35/

- Use a lighter admin template like "Minted One-Point-Five". More here:
http://www.joomla.org/content/view/3233/51/
Download here: http://www.joomlaworks.gr

[libby]

thanks for that - I will certainly try both of those tips

[Cheeky Monkey]

Libby

How have you got on with the performance tips suggested?

I have a Joomla 1.013 site which is experiencing slow performance, at the backend only as you've described

For the front end everything is fine and performance is great, both for browsing and front end editing

I've been looking to bottom out the backend performance issue and have found the following

If I use FireFox to browse in the backend and manage content, menus, modules etc, performance is fine and page loads are near instant

Doing the same with IE6, I'm seeing backend page loads of around 3 to 5 seconds

I'm using the latest Minted One-Point-Five backend admin template (v 2.2).

I'm stumped...

My thoughts are that there may be some IE specific scripts kicking in at the backend which is slowing the whole thing down

As a confirmation of this, can you try FireFox (2.0.0.10) in your backend and see whether you get a significant performance boost?

[libby]

Back-end performance is definitely better with Firefox - no question. But that hasn't really solved my problem. I think (and I haven't conclusively proved it yet) but I think that it is a problem with the image directories and these should have a limited number of files in them (less than 50).

I am also using Minted One-Point-Five backend admin template and that seems to help a little too.

[Cheeky Monkey]

For my site I've got hardly any images in the image folder, so for me the performance issue is down to some other factor

I've read this post here and by all accounts there may well be a FireFox performance boost over IE6

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,84118.0.html


I'm looking to get to the bottom of this as my backend users don't have the option to install FireFox as their desktops are locked down (corporate policy!)

[fotisevangelou]

Where is your site hosted Cheeky Monkey?

[Cheeky Monkey]

My Joomla site is hosted on my own dedicated server inside our corporate network

I'm setting it up to serve our corporate intranet. If all goes to plan, of course

[fotisevangelou]

Just make sure you got mod_gzip or mod_deflate enabled on your apache configuration.
Minted makes use of compression to speed up things. 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Take a look at the information in this post here for guidance on implementing a significant backend performance improvement, in particular in the backend module manager and also the backend template manager