I don't know if its just me but does Dreamhost sites load slower

They swear up and down they don't . Most of my sites are Joomla powered so I blamed Joomla for a while. Then I ran across some other Joomla sites and it was like, click on menu link, BAM, instantaneous. When I click on any link on any site I host with Dreamhost there is a small delay, sometimes even seconds, then the page will load.

I write them and they say you page loads quickly sir. And I am like, I know, its the time from when I click on the menu link to when the page beings loading I am having a problem with.

Has anyone else had an experience like this?

 

I have an account with them and haven't noticed loading times that were slower than normal on my sites.

 

check this out....

this is a non dreamhost site.... with a base joomla install , this templates is loaded with tables ok..

http://www.villagemortgage.net

you click a menu link and it is like instantaneous to load the next page.

this is my test site for joomla hosted on dreamhost....

http://www.bj.dreamhosters.com/joomla

this template is pure xhtml/css no tables....

i am not saying the page doesn't load fast but the time after clicking a menu item to the page begins to load is a few seconds off.....

or i may just be going stir crazy...

 

They seem to take the same amount of time to me. The mortgage site also took a second for the page to load for me.

 

In my experience dreamhost reponse time is MUCH faster than any other hosting I am with (site5). Ping times are in the range of 30ms while with site5 and my previous hosts it was around 80ms.

Hope this helps. (and yeah, my sites load fast too)

 

Yeah, and they have been very cooperative but it is a reality....

For instance, if i go to www.domaintools.com or yahoo or here or anywhere....everything is pretty instantaneous.....

if i go to any Dreamhost site that I have it take a few seconds for the site to pull up..... even if i go to dreamhost.com it takes a while....i am not sure why....

very frustrating to me

 

That site wouldnt load for me, was taking too long. I only see 21 other sites on the server so it really shouldnt be a server overload.

Is that a shared server or are they all your sites?

 

All of my sites are served on Dreamhost. Those at the bottom are test play sites, no client sites but still with Dreamhost under same account and FTP user.

I use Joomla for the majority of mysites. I did just find out Dreamhost is having some trouble tonight. But two things I dont get.

1) They are awesome but they always seem to be getting attacked or something going down. Is this normal for hosting companies and I just don't know it because Dreamhost is my first?

2) I have had them test this and others here on DP but it is crazy. If i go to any other site not hosted by Dreamhost. The site loads lightening fast in any browser I may be using. If I go to a dreamhost site , the browser searches for the site for a few seconds before loading the page.

 

I am working on a site that uses zen-cart and it is hosted on dream host. Sometimes it seems like it takes a little longer than it should, but I am on the shared plan and do not have anything to compare to.

 

That sounds similar to what I am experiencing. Can you post a link or PM it to me so I can see if it is similar. I wonder if it is how the set up their databases.

ps. how is the zen cart templating...

 

I have all my sites at dreamhost and I was just checking their status site www.dreamhoststatus.com (their admin panel is currently down) and I was amazed to see that they have constantly something or other going down/crashing/ddos happening (I just brwosed their system outage blog).

I was hoping I could see some time gap between their outage annoucments, but no..it goes back three months back....(then I left reading it )

this: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/category/system-outages/

 

it is lakesportz.com. I had a lot of problems trying to template it, but I have never used anything like this. I'm assuming it is similar to Joomla. Once I got firefox (never used anything but ie) and started using the plug ins the css made a lot more sense and now I can actually make things look like how I want. Now I just have to figure out how I want it to look.

Oh yeah, keep in mind that I only have 2 test products in my database.

 

yeah deciding how to make it look is the challenge....your site does exactly like mine...browser stalls while trying to find it then it load fine.....

wonder if it how their database is set up...

 

I don't know enough about databases, but I kind of remember someone complaining about their database was on a different server or something. I notice it the most when I am doing a refresh, it doesn't seem to be as bad when it is in my cache.

I have had a few problems logging in to my control panel, but my sites will still be up.

 

well everytime i have it check out by them they say they see know difference. it makes me feel like i am going crazy. i dont think they are lying , i just dont know how to explain my problem.

 

It could be the server having to process the joomla php and then serve up the page, ie you get a slight delay whilst the page is 'made' on the server. The more powerful or dedicated the server, the less the delay.

Caching, if not already turned on can greatly improve page rendering speeds.

 

caching where? on the server or on my PC?

 

Caching in Joomla.

 

Didn't know you could do that? Does it take up a lot of disk space? Do you think this would apply to Zen Cart and things also

 

I've not used joomla personally, only Mambo and more recently an amazing (but initially hard to learn) CMS called Xaraya.

But from my experience, you can turn caching on and off for most CMS and yes it uses disk space, usually you specify how much you're willing to allow.