Sprkus

I have been tweaking this Web site for a year trying to speed up page loading times. Depending on the time of day, it takes up to 40 seconds just to load the front page. I thought it was my fault.

I thought the themes I was using in WordPress were just too large. I thought I was using too many plugins. The main reason I originally looked into transfering my photos to Flickr instead of hosting them all in this site was because the site was just really bogged down.

It would take 10 seconds on a good day to load each new page. At times the site was unreadable.

After re-installing a fresh copy of WordPress and switching down to the simpler default theme yesterday, the site didn’t run any faster. So I started to believe that the fault was in my Web host, Network Solutions.

Turns out I was right.

In Network Solutions defense, they responded to my complaint in eerily quick fashion. Eery, because I never complained to Network Solutions directly.

After posting a ‘tweet’ on Twitter around 1:30 p.m. yesterday, I received this email from a TSS Supervisor at Network Solutions two-and-a-half hours later:

I saw your twit about running slowly. I’d be happy to check into this for you.. Can you tell me the issues you are seeing?

Despite being a bit weirded out in a Big Brother kind of way, I e-mailed him back with more explanation about the problem and a half hour later he responded:

Rick just to let you know I sent it to my specialized SWAT team to investigate. I told them that it is slow at different times of the day. They will get back to me today and will also be reviewing the site from time to time tomorrow conducting tests at different times of the day.

SWAT team? Ah, very nice. At this point I had already signed up for a Web hosting account with HostMonster but I had a bit of work to do with setting up a duplicate blog on a second server and testing it out. I had some time left to see what Network Solutions could do — and I was intrigued by the word ‘SWAT.’

In the meantime, I copied my blog over to the new server and the results were trememdous. The site runs faster than Baumann’s nose after a trip to Vegas: www.mostbeautifulgirlintheroom.com.

Depending on when you read this post, Sprkus.com may have already been transfered to HostMonster and you may not notice any difference. If you CAN see the difference, I’ll be duplicating each post on both sites untill the transfer is complete. It could take up to two weeks.

As a side note, “Most Beautiful Girl in the Room” is a reference to a Flight of the Conchords song. The domain was free with the new hosting account.

UPDATE: The trasfer is complete. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the site a little better now. Surfing around isn’t so aggravating.