Vidahost, Magento and VPS

PhillyDee · 16 Jul 2013 at 17:45

Hello all, going to pick your collective brains a bit!

I currently have a 2 websites on the same advanced package (including SSL for each domain) with Vidahost. These use ZenCart and Opencart.

I have just created a new domain, with Magento CE, and I have found it struggles. The basic SQL is 20Mb with 10 test items (compared with 2 and 4 for the others with hundreds of products).

Now, I have been in contact with Vidahost, and I am tempted to move up to their VPS (business + account)

Currently paying:
£194 hosting per year (plus an extra SSL once site is running +£39)

The new site will have thousands of products, Currently the basic stuff I want on this is around 548 products (with 16 varieties on each product means 8768 products required - up to now!), now on a magento install, will this produce problems?

I can either split the new site off onto its own hosting which means a total cost of £348 including 3 SSL certs, or I can move to a VPS which is £499 per year. This would run all 3 websites, and I do eventually want to move the other 2 websites to magento.

Its a big step, but will it give a massive boost in performance, or is it just required for any large magento site?

Would I need to do anything else apart from what I do with hosting now via cpanel? I have managed a dedi box for games servers before, but that's just basic stuff.

daz · 16 Jul 2013 at 18:43

The main thing with Magento is that it has thousands of file includes, so benefits massively from running in an environment where you have a PHP opcode cache. I've seen sites go from 3-4 seconds loading time under suPHP on shared hosting (which you want your host to be running for security) to around a second under DSO with something like APC (which is [potentially less secure, but only if you're sharing the server with other people).

Are the stores brand new or are they trading and making money? Obviously that will weigh on your decision of how much to invest in to a hosting solution.

PhillyDee · 16 Jul 2013 at 19:30

The 2 exisiting ones do, and the third is one I have hopes pinned on making even more.

Is this something you do as a business, spare time etc? I am pretty clueless when it comes to server side stuff (and not afraid to admit it) and cannot afford to pay a company the several thousands of pounds they want to build a polished site with all this taken care of. All the cheaper ones want to use their own software, where I require Magento CE as it interfaces perfectly with my inventory/order management software (which runs over ebay, amazon, zen, open etc) and syncs everything together.

DSO? APC? Really, I have no idea (I guess DSO Dedicated Server Oranges?

)!

cheechm · 17 Jul 2013 at 00:27

Vidahost will probably have the best answer for you. They know exactly how their servers are setup etc...

dmsims · 17 Jul 2013 at 21:14

Magento is a resource hog - what drove the move to it ?

Terrier_Jimlad · 17 Jul 2013 at 23:11

You need to email Seb (rather than open a ticket) and ask him to move you to a server like Jamaica as it's a fast SQL box ... Also, Magento off the shelf is poorly optomized, you can speed it up a fair bit yourself from the admin panel.

The biggest Magento install I host at the moment has 1215 products and it's fairly speedy - trust me if you want the details

blade007 · 21 Jul 2013 at 10:15

You might need to consider being on an SSD shared server to run Magento well. Vidahost have many of them but you will need to let them know.

I know quite a few companies who run Magento for their Ecommerce - and to run it very fast they at least have to hava a decent spec VDS or their own server.

p_r_i_m_e · 22 Jul 2013 at 09:34

magento is a monster, a hugely powerful an adaptable monster, but a monster none the less, it is far more complicated than it need be, is nowhere near as intuitive as it could be.
It is far too over the top for many people and it's resource hog nature must be the scourge of the hosting industry, unless of course they love it because they get to charge for a VDS or dedicated when a normal shared account would be perfectly ok for most other solutions.

PhillyDee · 24 Jul 2013 at 20:27

dmsims said:
Magento is a resource hog - what drove the move to it ?

I use order management software that interfaces with it much easier and a lot more streamlined than other solutions. I currently use ZenCart and opencart, and it needs far far too much customisation out of the box. To be honest, I do not like opencart, and zencart is also pretty complex, to the point I hhave made so many modifications to it over the years that I have lost control of the code itself. I may eventually move both of these to Magento depending on how this one works out.

Terrier_Jimlad said:
You need to email Seb (rather than open a ticket) and ask him to move you to a server like Jamaica as it's a fast SQL box ... Also, Magento off the shelf is poorly optomized, you can speed it up a fair bit yourself from the admin panel.

The biggest Magento install I host at the moment has 1215 products and it's fairly speedy - trust me if you want the details

Cheers!

I went with the VDS offering on the Business+ hosting. It was not going to be much more than buying extra SSL certs to go with a cheaper VDS etc.

I am getting migrated soon, and it has to be said, Vidahost are fantastic helps, and great customer service.