mandric

"You could also make each connection finish faster."

Well my I have set KeepAlive Off. Not sure what else I can do to close connections.

"remove mod_php from your Apache process, which is a big memory savings."

That's what I'm shooting for but php under mod_fcgid has proven to be unstable, or I have to dig deeper to find the problems.

"Profiling your code and removing the bottlenecks would be another good option."

I've never done this on php any hints would be appreciated. But I am not too crazy about digging through random client code, I'd rather be able to handle the average inefficiency.

"I would instead suggest you make a lean VirtualHost section just for those assets."

Well I'm not sure how to make a lean virtualhost. I thought I could only remove modules from the main apache config, not a vhost. So I don't understand how I can make a vhost leaner than the parent apache. I should look into this further, but any advice is appreciated.

I also could live with having another slice just doing media serving. If I could share the filesystem or run some rsync script, in some efficient/non-cumbersome manner, between the media server (threaded apache) and app server (main box with php etc) that could work and would allow more parallelism, as they say, for faster web pages.

Then again you have the same problem with things like drupal, that just plop media all over the place and it's up to the client to maintain the separation of media in their code. Drupal users don't do that.

Ooh. I didn't think of having two apache configurations on the same server ... one that does media serving and is streamlined and one that does mod_php. I would prefer this over nginx. At least have the sanity of staying in one world. Thanks for that tip.

So I run multiple sites on this server and plan to keep adding more, so that's another reason configuration maintenance is an issue. Not to mention one day I plan to write a web gui to handle all this configuration ... and I don't need nginx's super-duper performance. I need a stable piece of software to configure, apache does everything, I've been using it for years, know all the ins and outs, and memory is cheap. Just mod_php is the bear and you add drupal to that and you have a beast.

I don't know what the bottleneck is really, that is part of the problem. But I know that every now and then when we we get bursts of traffic I can find with a /server-status that 50 apache processing are in a write state.

"you'll literally _have_to_ to different media serving and load balancing if you plan to grow whatever_this_is."

I guess my point is that it's a mod_php issue and I may not need nginx. My plan is to try a threaded apache without mod_php and use mod_fcgi for php. If that doesn't work then try a threaded apache with mod_php and see what happens.

Another solution is find another provider that offers more memory and similar service for the same price. But it will be hard to match slicehost's service I think.

The use case is handling 50 concurrent connections ...

Thanks for this input.

Added the "Live outside Chicago?" link to the footer. But don't have time right now to setup a form. ;( If we get 50 emails today I'll setup the form.

With the sub form, bit of js is a nice idea, also will do.

As far as the maps, it's a bit of eye candy, generally people like maps. It's just cool to see and leads the eye down the page. Not sure how informational it is right now, but might be in the future.

Not sure about the front page nav link issue. I think it's pretty simple but only way to really know is to get feedback and observe people using it. I'm sure it will undergo some changes soon.