500%+ Speed Improvement of Dolphin!

In some cases up to 25x speed increase is possible. Without upgrading, without modifications of Dolphin code, only by tuning your hosting server properly. Read on...

Wondering why 7.0.3 is taking so long? It's because we're taking the speed issue a lot more seriously now and over the last 2 weeks we have been researching and testing as crazy. We tried different setups, compared servers of our partner hosting providers and tracked performance of some clients' sites. As a (interim) result we have two major groups of "answers":

1. Hosting server setup

Our tests showed dramatic contrast in performance of Dolphin on different server configurations. In some cases we are talking about up to "25 times" variation! Moreover, some of the popular Dolphin hosting providers have made the poorest possible choices for their servers. We already had a bold guess about this after we worked on BoonEx.com server optimisation and only confirmed it during our latest testing. In short, the first thing you need to do to speed up Dolphin is to properly configure your hosting server.

Now, it would be irresponsible to give advice like that without any specific recommendations, so we have started a new document with our tips and comparisons. We will be updating this document regularly, as soon as we find even better options. So, right now you can speed up your Dolphin-based site dramatically and reduce yoru hosting account load by following instructions given in:

Dolphin Hosting Server Setup Recommendations

Please, read it carefully and use the tips as long as you understand them and feel confident about what you are doing. If in doubt, try to force your hosting provider to do it. Some files benefit more than others, some less, but overall you may expect up to twice better files execution times across entire Dolphin package. This is A LOT and will translate into better search engine rankings, more pleasant browsing experience and happier clients.

To hosting providers: please, read our recommendations and move Dolphin-based sites to optimised machines. You may contact us for any help with tuning your servers. In short order we plan to start measuring and comparing hosting providers performance and feature those that do the best job for our clients. It is in your best interest to optimise for Dolphin.

2. Dolphin

On the Dolphin side we pinpointed some of the major bottlenecks and work on them right now. Our goal is to introduce most obvious and quick "cures" into 7.0.3 (eAccelerator, MemCached, gZip CSS, JS cache, some code optimisation) and then produce Dolphin 7.1 with more significant improvements. The catch with Dolphin is that "perceived speed" can be vastly enhanced with reworked layout/design, navigation menu, default arrangement of blocks, streamlining of options, optimising AJAX, etc. You could see what we achieved with latest Forums update, and that's what we're doing for 7.1 too.

Speed

This is an important topic on its own and I will sure bring it up again later, but now I need to say that we decided to take SPEED as the single most important focus in our further development. Latest changes in BoonEx.com, experience with other sites and clients requests show that speed is only getting more important despite improving internet connections and beefier servers. People just expect the web to be faster. More importantly, when/if we focus on speed, we make better choices in every other aspect - design, layout, usability, coding, security, etc. So, from now and on I pronounce SPEED as the mantra and the arch-challenge for BoonEx development and once we get "up to the speed" it will become Dolphin's main advantage.