Apache Vs Nginx

Most hosting companies currently run the Apache web server, there are other options and from our testing Nginx (pronounced engine-X) is a real stand out. Nginx is extremely good at serving static content quickly with low and predictable memory usage.

Nginx is one of a handful of servers written to address the C10K problem. Unlike traditional servers, Nginx doesn’t rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load. Even if you don’t expect to handle thousands of simultaneous requests, you can still benefit from Nginx’s high-performance and small memory footprint. Nginx scales in all directions: from the smallest VPS all the way up to clusters of servers.

Generally the ability to change web servers is not something offered by most hosts, however DreamHost does give this option with their Web VPS service, this article is a tutorial on switching your Apache server to Nginx and setup the W3-Total-Cache plugin to speed up your WordPress install.

Before We Being

Switching to Nginx is a big change, there are major differences between Apache and Nginx, among the most important is that your .htaccess file (that magic thing that makes your pretty permalinks work) will NOT work! Prepare to have some downtime if you are using permalinks.

Prepare for the Move

I generally recommend making this switch one site at a time, that means if you have more then one website  on your VPS setup a second server running Nginx, leave your original running Apache, it’ll cut down on the amount of downtime you have during the move. For the sake of this tutorial we’re going to pretend you’re only running one website on the VPS.

1) Log into ftp and create a folder within your home directory called nginx, within that folder create another called yourdomain.com, so for wheretohost.net it looks like this:

nginx/yourdomain.com/

This folder is where your website specific nginx rules are going to go, although these rules  can be complex we’re all very thankful that the basic WordPress rules are very simple. You’re going to create a file with the extension .conf, I normally put my wordpress rules into a file called wordpress.conf and it contains the following:

if (!-e $request_filename) {

rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;

}

Making The Switch

As long as you have a Web VPS, DreamHost makes this part easy. Visit the DreamHost control panel and visit the VPS->Configure Server page. You’ll want to change the HTTP Server setting to “nginx”. Enable the PHP cache setting for that extra special boost only opcode caching can provide, plus we’re going to be using that as the basis of our WP cache setup! Save your settings and go get a cup of coffee, it’s going to take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes for the change to take affect.

VPS Configure Server Page

Test Your Site

Finished that coffee already? Awesome, well welcome back! It’s time to check out your website, it should be responding already and doing so rapidly, unless you had a special setup everything should simply work.

Now it’s time to setup so cache, so let’s visit your WordPress dashboard. Go on, log in… good stuff!

Install W3-Total-Cache

W3 Total Cache Settings

Check your plugins and make sure you disable any other cache plugins – such as WP-SuperCache or wp-cache.

Visit your Plugins->Add New page in the dashboard and do a search for W3, the first result should be W3 Total Cache. Click on the “Install Now” link, confirm the install request, if all went well on the next page you’ll be able to click on the “Activate Plugin” link.

Configure Cache

If everything has gone smoothly you’ve now got a new menu on the bottom left of your WordPress dashboard section, it’s called “Performance”. Go click it, then check out the screenshot, since you’re running on a VPS and have XCache enabled use the opcode caching method for page, database, object cache, and minify.

That’s it, enjoy!

When looking over DreamHost and their compatibility with zenPhoto I found that they have an “Easy One Click” install available. This means two things:

1. It extremely simple to go from nothing to installed in no time flat.
2. DreamHost and zenPhoto are extremely compatible.

In fact I put together a quick video of the installation process. Enjoy!

[See post to watch Flash video]

Signup For DreamHost! – Get $50 Off With “WTH” Promo Code

Features of zenPhoto – from the zenPhoto website.

• Internationalization/localization
• Multi-lingual titles and descriptions
• Plugin system
• Slideshow
• Automatically generated thumbnails, custom crops possible!, and sized-down images
• Upload via FTP or via the admin interface
• Move/copy/rename images and albums without loosing any data
• Upload images, albums (folders) or even zip-archives
• Comments on images and albums with powerful spam filters
• AJAX-powered edit-while-you-browse
• Sub albums; interface for moving/renaming images and albums.
• Video support for Flash Video (.flv), MPEG4 (.mp4), Quicktime (.mov) and 3GP (.3gp)
• Audio support for MP3 and MP4
• Password protection for gallery and albums
• EXIF and IPTC support
• Watermarks for images
• Powerful search with boolean expressions
• Tags: Categorize you images with tags
• Image and album rating
• Dynamic albums: Generate albums from searches!
• Highly customizable theme engine
• rss for gallery, albums and comments
• Multiple administrative users with varying rights
• Cruft free, search engine friendly URLs with mod_rewrite