Well, I gave DreamHost PS a try. And let me tell you, it works great.
So why is this blog back on my DreamHost shared account? A few reasons; mostly, there’s no payoff between the cost and the performance difference, at least for this blog.
I got in on DreamHost PS as part of a promotion that basically made both the Web and MySQL virtual servers cost me about $15 per month. That’s exceedingly cheap, considering that for that small price, I got 150 MB of protected memory and protected CPU cycles.
The performance benefits were impressive. MySQL queries were executed lightning-fast, and there was no page grinding waiting for PHP to get around to doing its thing. The normally long process of working in the WordPress administration panel was considerably sped up, even going faster than when I had enabled Google Gears for the administration panel. (Firefox version 3.0.10 causes a crash when using the “Turbo”, or Google Gears-enabled, administration panel and its Flash uploader; I like the Flash uploader, so Gears had to go. The problem has been fixed in Firefox 3.0.11.)
But this isn’t Perez Hilton’s blog; I’m not posting 50 times a day (although I am trying to post at least once a day from here on out), and I’m not getting thousands of comments every day, either (one a week is a frantic pace here).
Since that’s the case, I set the WP Super Cache plugin to keep cached copies of pages for 8 hours at a time; that pretty much eases the burden on both PHP and the MySQL server.
Really, could I justify spending $15 per month for a second of two faster loading of the cache? In my mind, no.
This is especially true because I’ve made a commitment to never have advertising on this site, and to never charge for the code I distribute here. (I do use Amazon’s product previews, which are linked to an affiliate code. However, I do that mostly so people can see the prices of things I recommend without having to leave the site. I’ve made $5 from amazon.com Associates since Aug. 22, 2006, the day this blog started; $3.92 of that was because a family member purchased Christmas gift DVDs in 2006 after visiting my site and clicking a link. And yes, I do accept donations; of this writing, since the blog started in 2006, one very generous fan has donated $50.)
Because this is a labor of love, I can’t see spending too much money on it, especially when I’m not getting much out of the deal in the financial sense. (I do this because I love to teach, and because it’s my duty to give back to the community.)
Were this blog more of a resources hog, or far more popular than it is, I would (and will) run back to DreamHost PS. But for now, shared hosting will do just fine, and here the blog will stay for the foreseeable future.
