The running WordPress blogs on a well known domain is slow, if you don’t optimize for speed. As the requests are going through the full LAMP stack, caching stuff is the first stop. Second I don’t use apache as primary delivery webserver, I use nginx to do this. I have chosen this setup as it provides lots of performance and there is no need to change anything in the existing WordPress installation. Even experienced WordPress users do not see the difference on the WordPress side.
LAMP - Linux Apache MySQL PHP
From LAMP to NVA
Classical LAMP setup uses following apache config for a webserver with name based virtual hosts:
##### start ww.linuxpinguin.de
Listen 80
NameVirtualHost 178.63.61.72:80
LogFormat ”%V %v %h %l %u %t \”%r\” %>s %b \”%{Referer}i\” \”%{User−Agent}i\”” cvh
<VirtualHost 178.63.61.72:80 >
DocumentRoot /var/www/linuxpinguin.de
ServerName www.linuxpinguin.de
php_admin value open_basedir /var/www/linuxpinguin.de:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/linuxpinguin.de/error.log
CustomLog ”|/sbin/cronolog −−symlink /var/log/apache2/linuxpinguin.de/access.log /var/log/apache2/linuxpinguin.de/access.log %Y−%m” cvh
</VirtualHost>
##### ende www.linuxpinguin.de
NVA - nginx varnish apache
This is converted into the following apache config to fit into the NVA setup. As you see only the Listen port and the binding address have changed.
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:81>
<Directory "/var/www/web5/web">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ServerName www.linuxpinguin.de
ServerAlias www.linux-pinguin.de
ServerAlias linux-pinguin.de
ServerAlias linuxpinguin.de
ServerAdmin webmaster@linuxpinguin.de
DocumentRoot /var/www/web5/web
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log vhost_combined
ServerAlias linuxpinguin.de www.linux-pinguin.de
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.php5 index.php4 index.php3 index.shtml index.cgi index.pl index.jsp Default.htm default.htm
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/web5/cgi-bin/
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
AddHandler cgi-script .pl
ErrorLog /var/www/web5/log/error.log
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5
php_admin_flag safe_mode On
php_admin value open_basedir /var/www/linuxpinguin.de:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear
AddType text/html .shtml
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml
Alias /error/ "/var/www/web5/web/error/"
ErrorDocument 400 /error/invalidSyntax.html
ErrorDocument 401 /error/authorizationRequired.html
ErrorDocument 403 /error/forbidden.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error/fileNotFound.html
ErrorDocument 405 /error/methodNotAllowed.html
ErrorDocument 500 /error/internalServerError.html
ErrorDocument 503 /error/overloaded.html
AliasMatch ^/~([^/]+)(/(.*))? /var/www/web5/user/$1/web/$3
AliasMatch ^/users/([^/]+)(/(.*))? /var/www/web5/user/$1/web/$3
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.linux-pinguin\.de [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.linuxpinguin.de/$1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^linux-pinguin\.de [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.linuxpinguin.de/$1 [L,R]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^linuxpinguin\.de [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.linuxpinguin.de/$1 [L,R]
</VirtualHost>
Now were do the request for 127.0.0.1:8080 are coming from? They come from our varnish caching daemon. Here is the smallest configuration for it:
backend default {
host = ”localhost ”;
port = ”8080”; # This need to be the same as the Apache vHost port listener !
}
varnish itself listens on 127.0.0.1 port 6081, so we now need to know where varnish gets its requests from? They are coming from the nginx webserver. This is the configuration of the nginx:
###### start linuxpinguin.de
server {
listen 80; # Default listen port
server_name www.linuxpinguin.de linuxpinguin.de www.linux-pinguin.de linux-pinguin.de;
access_log /var/log/apache2/linuxpinguin.de/access_log;
gzip on; # Turn on gZip
gzip_disable msie6;
gzip_static on;
gzip_comp_level 9;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
location / {
proxy_redirect off; # Do not redirect this proxy - It needs to be pass-through
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Server-Address $server_addr;
proxy_pass_header Set-Cookie;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6081; # Pass all traffic through to Varnish
}
}
##### end linuxpinguin.de
The running WordPress blogs on a well known domain is slow, if you don’t optimize for speed. As the requests are going through the full LAMP stack, caching stuff is...
