Load Testing Results: Faster, Better, Stronger

After consistent tooling, research and retooling throughout the day, I believe I found a great new configuration for MilkandCookies.

Recently we switched to a new web server (Lighttpd) which is leaner and faster than our old friend Apache. Today I took the time, during our regular mid-day load, to tweak and fix a few longstanding performance issues. Fixes included a combination of settings for caching (local and upstream), compression (css, javascript) and configuration (finding the right timeouts, and number of processes to spawn, et al).

There is no easy way to do this other that educated guesses along with trial and error.

Once I was done, I ran the site through a couple of cache checker pages to be sure all the caching headers worked as expected. Caching, like many other technologies on the web, is a voodoo science due to differences of opinion about which standards are correct. But I hope to have solved problems like having to get the same data twice, even though it hasn't changed, and it's evil twin circumstance, getting the cached page even when it's changed on the server (such as before and after logging in).

Let me know if you are experiencing any issues.

I hope this results in a zippier feel as you navigate the site, and I thank for your patience today as things were retooled.