WordPress MU

I've gone through some parts of the forum. And I have learned that you cannot just run mu on a shared server. It's bad.

But right now, I've got a reseller hosting account. I want to be the first in a new hot niche and I am desperate to install mu soon. Dont have enough resources to upgrade to virtual dedicated.

I want to know how many blogs I can run without weighing down the server if all blogs are updated everyday and each gets at most 10 comments per post with and average amount of visitors.

Sorry if I really sound like a noob but I'll be grateful if I get help soon.

And I wont run those blogs perpetually on the reseller account. I'll move to a dedicated server once I get the resources.

I will also like to know how possible and easy it would be to move a mu installation with blogs running live on it.

Thanks in advance.

Couple hundred, maybe. Look at your hosts limitations for simultaneous database connections and CPU usage.

As for how easy to move... well it's "interesting" to say the least. :D As long as you plan ahead and gve yourself a day, notify all users etc... you should be good.

I wouldn't say a couple hundred. Maybe on some hosts, but that's pushing it.

They may offer a ton of space and bandwidth, but they're really monitoring CPU time and DB connections/queries/size.

In fact, I'm going through this with a client as we speak.

Their site was running pretty slow a good bit of the time. After optimizing as much of their plugins and such that I could, the only thing left would be to break up the database. I had them ask their host (who claims you can create unlimited databases) if they had a problem with a couple hundred smaller db's, vice one big one.

Here's an excerpt of the communication, names changed to protect the innocent.

Question:

Fred asked: "I am running a wordpress MU on your server and am getting performance problems. My developer has recommended I create multiple dbases to help lighten the load.

Do you allow this? There will be a couple hundred dbases."

Response:

Host replied: "I checked with our MySQL admin and he very strongly discourages this.

Actually he very strongly discourages the use of MU on the shared hosting environment, mostly because of the way it continues to add large amounts of tables to the database. Basically it starts to cause daily backup issues and degrades the performance across the entire server.

He mentioned that once it grows past about 500 to 1000 tables it'll be causing enough problems to warrant disabling your site, and recommends moving to a dedicated server for any serious use of this software."

I highlighted a couple places of interest in the reply. Specifically, the max tables before they kick you, and their recommendation in terms of hardware for using this software (MU).

That isn't from a fly by night host, although they "offer the moon to make it sound good". That's from dreamhost. (Popular, but not what I would personally consider reputable.)

Remember that every blog add 8 tables by default, without any plugins, plus you have your global tables and the primary blog as well (9 tables). So you have 17 to start with, without a single signup or plugin. That gives no more than about 100 blogs at their max (without plugin tables), and 50 or so before they may kick you.

However, you'll have performance issues before that most likely.

Yep. nice ocnversation there. :)

My couple hundred was assuming you had a lot of dead ones and maybe only 10% usage.

@lunabyte
Thats a very long way of saying, 'Chap, get enough money and get a dedicated'.

I very much appreciate your post. Thanks a lot.

I'll give it a shot all the same. I dont expect more than 100 signups and more than 10% activity till I move.

I'd like to know the process of moving the installation when I'm ready to go dedicated.

I have Hostgator, and so far they haven't said anything negative about running MU on my shared hosting account. Even though I won't be using it to become a blog hoster, just to create a "blog network" as my site.

Support has even been helpful in determining if their servers meet MUs requirements as well as how to fulfill them.

Hostgator's CPU limits on a shared account is 25% usage for longer than 90 seconds. What kind of load could cause WPMU to generate this kind of CPU utilization?

Whenever I check my servers stats the CPU is floating between 5% and 7% (2 CPUs) and memory usually floats around 13% usage. I don't think WPMU will kill it.

I am just wondering if it could last long enough for ad revenue to pay for a dedicated server. I am also looking into renting a "blowout" P4 dedicated for around $39.95 a month, but that would require changing hosts.

I have a shared hosting account and I have 17 databases and 850 tables. I have like 5 addon domains, and I now have WPMU installed, but I dont plan on taking it big, if I do, it would go dedicated.

Point is, I have 17 databases and 850 tables with 34MB in my SQL disk space.

Who is your host Kevin? How many blogs are you running? How many hits per day do you get?

Lunarpages.

Most my accounts are Joomla!, I am just now getting into WP, and my first jump was into WPMU, because I want to build a sports network site for writers and photographers. Though Joomla! would do the job, I want a challenge and I think MU would be great for each writer to have their own blog, put each of their work on the front page of the network.

"What kind of load could cause WPMU to generate this kind of CPU utilization?"

A million hits a month would. Remember MU is dynamic. Every page view generates a db query - or more correctly a number of queries. I can't even articulate how bad it gets if you get pounded by spam. (yes, every so often spammers will pound servers en masse)

At some point, yes you will have to move off shared if you get any size. the only tricky part is moving your site before they kick you off.

(check the archives, it happened to me.)

You don't have to go straight to dedicated - get a cheap VPS to try it out.

The process of moving is easy - transfer everything over to the new site, check a few things, then change nameservers.

"Point is, I have 17 databases and 850 tables with 34MB in my SQL disk space."

That's 850 combined across 17. That's about 100 blogs with MU, or less with plugin tables, all in a single database.

Not to mention the number of queries per page load, etc. Have you seen the number of queries some of these plugins out there run? Hundreds (per plugin) on every page load. Most of them don't use object cache, either.

The moral to this story is that on occasion you can get by to start with, but any serious use of the software requires dedicated hardware.

MU in essence makes you a web host, and anything other than your common reseller has their own servers.

Andrea,

Thanks for the input.

Deciding on a platform for my site has been difficult to say the least, I have spent days and days going over everything from Drupal to Joomla to Wordpress to phpBB based portals as well as a myriad of other CMSes. I have one site with GoDaddy running Drupal, but am disappointed with how Drupal doesn't really excel at anything, just has vanilla capabilities for a lot of things.

Hostgator doesn't have VPS anymore, their cheapest dedicated is a $75 a month unmanaged server.

For a beginner 1 million hits a month won't be achieved quickly. Plus I think 1 million hits a month would generate enough revenue to cover a server.

Of course my skillset would need to improve significantly at that point.

I am paying $15 a month for their top shared plan, so increasing that to $40 a month wouldn't be terrible if it came to that.

Their Managed servers go from $180 to $330ish a month.

Perhaps I will just use straight WP to start, I think moving over to MU later would not be too difficult.

"For a beginner 1 million hits a month won't be achieved quickly." Only took me a year.