WampServer

I've got 12 domains on one website server. The host provider load times have begun to slow down, really slowing the speed of my uploads. Maintaining the sites is a pain... waiting and waiting for files to upload. Often, the upload is interrupted and it takes hours to get some things up to the site.

I have the Wamp5 working now on my XP machine. The speed is phenomenal compared to what I've been dealing with. I did use a simpleserver couple years back, but I quit using a local server for some reason.

Mostly, I was doing only a couple sites and it was easier then. Now maintaining 12 sites has gotten to be alot of work. Just keeping current content is alot of work.

Regardless... I don't think I want to put a localhost server up on my computer for each domain. There is some problem, because I've made a practice of using alot of the same names for MySql on all sites. I do this so I can remember what CMS I'm using with that MySql db. Joom1, Drup1, Xoops1, etc.

I'm thinking it could be a bit of a problem trying to access localhost when I have 12 localhosts...

The WAMP on my machine is just for developing and testing my sites. It takes over an hour now for me to upload one new install package of the Joomla 1.5 to my host server. This is just upload time for the files.
I did the same thing this morning on my WAMP and it took less than 1minute. I just unzipped to the folder...Voila!

I'd appreciate any suggestions on this.

I'm a bit confused. It sounds to me like you're saying you're tired of slow speeds from your current Web host, and you found that installing Wamp on your current machine for testing is much faster and therefor you're thinking of moving from that host to running everything off your local machine? Is that what you're saying?

Testing on localhost will ALWAYS be faster. It does not go out to the internet. Judging your speed between localhost and a true Web connection is ill advisable. Additionally, you're probably only connected to the Internet using a cable modem or DSL or the like and not a business connection. If your sites are getting hammered enough that a business connection like your current host can't handle it, then doing it on your local machine is going to result in you DDOSing yourself and your clients sites.

My recommendations: Either get a second Web server and split the load, or get a much faster server. With multiple servers, you can either split the domains against the multiple servers, or you can configure the DNS to use two different IPs for the domains. With that you'll have to make sure only one is the master DB and the second replicates its data. This could be non-trivial depending on your system. Also, if you're using Etags make sure that they are not derived using the file system (something Apache does by default) because then browsers won't properly cache the files that are being served out. With this method, you need to make sure a user always uses the same path for files through out their entire stay (I assume a browser is smart enough to not go back and forth if their DNS lookup reported multiple A records, but I've never been in a position to test this so I do not know exactly).

In the mean time, I would begin looking at all of the research Yahoo has put out on high performance Web sites. Just properly configuring things like combining all CSS and JavaScript into one file for each type, setting Expires, Etags, and LastModified for your HTTP headers, and moving the placement of your JavaScript to the end (plus using DOMContentLoaded) could make your sites load faster.

Of course, I probably just misinterpreted what you were looking for and wrote all of that for nothing. If not though, I hope it helps.

If you end up needing a new server, check to see who the culprit(s) is that is getting the most traffic and try to split the cost of the upgrade with them.

Oh, and don't go with CI Host. They're based in Texas, so I understood why they were down earlier in the year when they were basically getting floods in certain areas, but I have no idea why they were down this morning... Weather.com reports their location as Sunny at the present time. And earlier this year when we were looking to upgrading, they would only offer the current OS that we were using, RedHat 7.1! We talked them into a custom package to get CentOS 4 on (5 came out like 2-4 months after our move), but it was a pill to get them to understand why we didn't want to reinstall a 6 year old OS that everyone I talked to knew how to exploit.

We moved one of our servers from CI Host to GoDaddy, and we have not experience downtime. The only draw backs I would consider with them were that the latency was a bit higher than I'd have liked, and that they restrict you to 7 or 8 IPs (a problem if you need SSL) and only allow 1000 outgoing SMTP connections a day (a problem if you have a newsletter feature).

Currently have 12 domain named sites I have put up on the webhosting provider server as internet sites.

All the sites are placed on one server, because if one goes down they're all down.

Don't want to change anything there...

I Don't plan to use or maintain a WAMP5 server for my sites to connect to the web.

Maintaining the sites is tough, and the upload download speed I now get between the webhost server and my computer are approaching "Tortoise speeds". I have to do something.

Therefore, a local server on my computer will be a great help. I can make and test everything, before I put up the files to the webhosting server. In fact, I can queue them up to upload during off peak hours. As it is, when I put them up I have to test them on the server... because I'm not running a local server on my computer.

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Basically the problem is...

Each website is on a separate registered domain name.

Each website is a standalone from all the other sites, no overlap or sharing of files.

Each website with a Joomla installation has MySql databases and users named the same. I do this because it makes it easier for me to remember names, uid and passwords.

Each website with a Drupal installation..... Ditto

Each website with a Xoops installation..... Ditto

So... I have made one installation of WAMP5 on my computer (1) server. I need to configure my localsever WAMP for 12 separate domains, with autonomy for each.

Because my databases are named the same, just putting the folders for each site on the 1 server isn't going to get it. I have to find a way to share the server with all the sites and still keep everything for each website separate.


I know this can be done, because my host provider is Linux/Apache/PHP.

Again, the installation of WAMP5 on my computer is just for development and testing.

Thanks