To Optimize or Upgrade? That is the Question

Thursday, August 20, 2015

If you are finding that your website is no longer loading or responding quickly and is not performing as efficiently in general, it may be time for an upgrade. How quickly are we talking here? Well, the majority of users will abandon a website that takes longer than four seconds to load. In this impatient, on-demand world, time is literally of the essence and every second counts.
But how do you know whether you merely need to tweak and optimize your server, or if you need to invest in a full upgrade in order to speed up your site?

You can optimize if…

First and foremost, you need to check into the usual suspects: if you’ve had an increase in web traffic or perhaps if there is a new application responsible for the slow performance, etc. If you haven’t found a logical cause to the problem, then you can consider these ways of optimizing your VPS:

Inspect your VPS default settings, like Apache, and check the configurations
Maintain an updated MySQL version
Cache your content
Optimize your content
Consider a CDN

If all of your performance issues can be fixed based on these optimization techniques, then you’ll likely only need to optimize your VPS instead of investing in a full upgrade. Of course, you don’t need to wait for slow performance to implement some of these optimizations. Employing tricks and techniques to encourage a better website performance is never a waste of time.

You need to upgrade if…

If you’ve have tried the above optimization techniques and your website is still under-performing, then it’s most likely time for an upgrade. It’s an unfortunate reality that upgrades are always eventually required. If your website is slowing down because of an increase of traffic to your site, then all that really means is that your hard work has paid off and your website is a success. So, instead of seeing it as a hassle, consider this need to upgrade your VPS as an achievement and moment of growth. Companies like Host1Plus have several options for performance requirements regarding VPS hosting, so do some research for the best configuration that suits you.

Often, merely increasing server size will be enough of an upgrade to get your site running at top speed again. This may include increasing bandwidth, CPU, RAM, disk space, etc. If you discover that your current provider doesn’t have enough scalability options and you have almost reached the extent of what they can offer you, then an upgrade may require moving to a new hosting company.

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