PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) + Wordpress

[KH-Jonathan]

DSO+mod_ruid2 is actually much faster than suPHP and fcgi, so that's why he's pointing you in that direction

I can't install PHP-FPM for you as it's not something we officially support since making it work with cPanel isn't supported. I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

 

[Franky]

PHP-FPM is best for high-traffic sites actually. It's not supported by cPanel but as you can see here people have managed to get it working.

The stuff internally of ours I referred to running it doesn't run on top of cPanel obviously. I've found Nginx+PHP-FPM+ZendOpcache to be a pretty mean combination, but again, this was all setup manually without cPanel.

Jonathan if that's the case, How can I install Nginx+PHP-FPM+ZendOpcache not in cpanel. Do I have to be in Ubuntu? Your not giving as specifics as to where or what operating system we should use.

 

[KH-Jonathan]

It could be on any OS. Just about any Linux distro or even Windows I think. I have ours setup on just base CentOS.

All of our offerings are paired with cPanel as without it we do not offer management. You're welcome to order a system from us without cPanel but it will be marked as unmanaged.

 

[Franky]

It could be on any OS. Just about any Linux distro or even Windows I think. I have ours setup on just base CentOS.

All of our offerings are paired with cPanel as without it we do not offer management. You're welcome to order a system from us without cPanel but it will be marked as unmanaged.

That's fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Franky]

Well, I finally got PHP-FPM working with no bugs...and it's both stable and FAST. I used the following in pre_virtualhost_global.conf:

<Directory "/home/username/public_html">
    <FilesMatch \.php$>
        SetHandler proxy:unix:/var/run/php-fpm/username.sock|fcgi://localhost/
    </FilesMatch>

    <RequireAll>
        Require all granted
    </RequireAll>
</Directory>

Lo and behold, PHP-FPM worked perfectly. All the problems I described above were gone, and the speed...WOW.

You MUST use "Require all granted" -- the Apache 2.2 allow/deny rules will not work, even though mod_access_compat is installed. Substitute "username" for the cPanel user of your choice.

The SetHandler method to enable PHP-FPM requires Apache 2.4.9 (or later) and PHP 5.5.18 (or later). While MPM-Event is not required, it should be used for performance reasons. In addition, Zend OPCache works incredibly well with PHP-FPM and should be used in favor of APC, XCache, or EAccelerator. (If you desire an object cache, use APCu.)

I hope this is of help to folks here.

Anybody can answer:

Do I still need WP Super Cache and or W3 Total Cache if you have these PHP-FPM installed? Just wondering coz if PHP-FPM (Fast CGI) is fast enough then I shouldn't need WP Super Cache? I'm on Cloudflare with WP Super Cache by the way, I guess my question is is VPS SSD good enough not to have a CDN like cloudflare?

Two questions above actually sorry, just need to compress it.

 

[Franky]

DSO+mod_ruid2 is actually much faster than suPHP and fcgi, so that's why he's pointing you in that direction

I can't install PHP-FPM for you as it's not something we officially support since making it work with cPanel isn't supported. I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

Jonathan,

If dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache is much faster than PHP and fcgi, can you install this on my dedicated server SSD with Nginx? I just upgraded to Dedicated server SSD and I wanted this installed once provisioning is done. Thanks

 

[Pie]

DSO+mod_ruid2 is actually much faster than suPHP and fcgi, so that's why he's pointing you in that direction

I can't install PHP-FPM for you as it's not something we officially support since making it work with cPanel isn't supported. I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

Thanks. See, I'm torn. Everyone says the same thing: Nginx (& microcaching) + PHP-FPM is the way to go for a high traffic WordPress blog like mine, and of course I only want the very best. So if getting that stack means I have to go unmanaged, that's a deal breaker for me.

 

[KH-Jonathan]

Anybody can answer:

Do I still need WP Super Cache and or W3 Total Cache if you have these PHP-FPM installed? Just wondering coz if PHP-FPM (Fast CGI) is fast enough then I shouldn't need WP Super Cache? I'm on Cloudflare with WP Super Cache by the way, I guess my question is is VPS SSD good enough not to have a CDN like cloudflare?

Two questions above actually sorry, just need to compress it.

PHP-FPM is a what's known as a PHP handler. SuperCache and W3TC are caching mechanisms. They have two completely different jobs. I'd recommend running both - but not disk-based caching at all. Always use RAM-based caching. In 99% of cases no cache is better than disk-cache.

Jonathan,

If dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache is much faster than PHP and fcgi, can you install this on my dedicated server SSD with Nginx? I just upgraded to Dedicated server SSD and I wanted this installed once provisioning is done. Thanks

Sure this won't be an issue. You can open a ticket and ask for it to be done or if you wish have it passed to me. It's a very trivial process to do this and our techs have all done this many times. Some of them may not be aware that ZendOpcache is available via PECL so it wouldn't hurt to mention that.

Thanks. See, I'm torn. Everyone says the same thing: Nginx (& microcaching) + PHP-FPM is the way to go for a high traffic WordPress blog like mine, and of course I only want the very best. So if getting that stack means I have to go unmanaged, that's a deal breaker for me.

It's the best in my opinion, but the difference isn't that big. Not enough to warrant dropping cPanel and going fully unmanaged without the background to do so.

Our stuff runs it because I can manage it, don't need the extra overhead of cPanel anyway, and I want our stuff as fast as humanly possible, and we have some really heavy traffic areas that I want customer's to have as pleasant and speedy experience with as possible. If cPanel's other features would be useful on these system's we'd probably be running them on cPanel with Apache but there's just no point so it's just as easy to throw Nginx together on raw Cent.

Hopefully this helps to clarify things.

 

[Dion]

I can't install PHP-FPM for you as it's not something we officially support since making it work with cPanel isn't supported. I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

Nginx is not officially supported on cPanel either, yet you support the nginxCP reverse proxy WHM addon.

Actually I understand why you do not want to officially support PHP-FPM. Getting it running well requires significant manual fine-tuning of the FPM pool configuration(s), and I can easily see fine-tuning of PHP-FPM installations becoming a strain on the support staff. NginxCP, on the other hand, is a simple installation that requires no fine-tuning.

 

[KH-Jonathan]

Nginx is not officially supported on cPanel either, yet you support the nginxCP reverse proxy WHM addon.

Actually I understand why you do not want to officially support PHP-FPM. Getting it running well requires significant manual fine-tuning of the FPM pool configuration(s), and I can easily see fine-tuning of PHP-FPM installations becoming a strain on the support staff. NginxCP, on the other hand, is a simple installation that requires no fine-tuning.

Precisely. Having to update configs manually every time a customer wants to add a cPanel account or domain just isn't feasible.

 

[Franky]

DSO+mod_ruid2 is actually much faster than suPHP and fcgi, so that's why he's pointing you in that direction

I can't install PHP-FPM for you as it's not something we officially support since making it work with cPanel isn't supported. I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

I just moved to CP-2 dedi server and it's the slowest ever. VPS SSD was faster. Do I have to wait 24 hours for total propagation? I mean the site is loading and I can browse but it's just slow. I think I should go back to VPS SSD.

 

[KH-DanielP]

I just moved to CP-2 dedi server and it's the slowest ever. VPS SSD was faster. Do I have to wait 24 hours for total propagation? I mean the site is loading and I can browse but it's just slow. I think I should go back to VPS SSD.

Did you get a CP2 with a SSD drive or without. There may be some things that still need to be tweaked out configuration wise to get you more of a speed boost but generally speaking when going from VPS to Dedicated its not about speed per say but capacity, being able to serve more requests etc.

If you'd like pop open a ticket and I'll have someone take a look at things for you.

 

[WebEndev]

I can toss you dso+mod_ruid2+zendopcache if you want though. If you serve a lot of static content this can be placed behind an Nginx reverse proxy with Apache still serving dynamic content such as PHP.

Hi Jonathan,

I currently run DSO +mod_ruid2 + Nginx (http://www.nginxcp.com/) as reverse proxy + APC on my SSD-3 VPS. I run WordPress sites exclusively. My PHP version is 5.4.31. It is a nice setup and quite fast...

I had a few questions for the expert

Would zendopcache have better performance than APC?

Does zendopcache require PHP 5.5, or will it run with 5.4.x?

Heard of any issues with PHP 5.5 and WordPress?

I noticed that on a dedicated SSD you set up for one of my clients, you installed Apache 2.4.10 instead of 2.2.x - I read somewhere that 2.4.x had worse performance than 2.2.x? Have they tweaked that out?

I have read that special care must be taken to run Apache 2.4.x with WordPress (http://gregrickaby.com/wordpress-with-apache-2-4-and-php-5-5/) - apparently you guys took that into consideration when you built out my clients dedi-ssd. WordPress runs fine there.

So I am looking for a new recipe for WordPress setup, while still keeping cPanel around (clients like it, and it's easier to support, as you know...).

Thanks!

 

[Franky]

Did you get a CP2 with a SSD drive or without. There may be some things that still need to be tweaked out configuration wise to get you more of a speed boost but generally speaking when going from VPS to Dedicated its not about speed per say but capacity, being able to serve more requests etc.

If you'd like pop open a ticket and I'll have someone take a look at things for you.

Yes I did get a CP-2 with a SSD Drive. Please I submitted a ticket for this. Have someone look at it. Please give me all the speed boost needed or I'll go back to VPS SSD 3

 

[KH-DanielP]

Yes I did get a CP-2 with a SSD Drive. Please I submitted a ticket for this. Have someone look at it. Please give me all the speed boost needed or I'll go back to VPS SSD 3

Can you let me know the ticket # and I'll look into it for you.

 

[Franky]

Can you let me know the ticket # and I'll look into it for you.

Daniel,

Here's the ticket ID : 494422


Thanks and appreciate it.

 

[KH-Jonathan]

Hi Jonathan,

I currently run DSO +mod_ruid2 + Nginx (http://www.nginxcp.com/) as reverse proxy + APC on my SSD-3 VPS. I run WordPress sites exclusively. My PHP version is 5.4.31. It is a nice setup and quite fast...

I had a few questions for the expert

Would zendopcache have better performance than APC?

Does zendopcache require PHP 5.5, or will it run with 5.4.x?

Heard of any issues with PHP 5.5 and WordPress?

I noticed that on a dedicated SSD you set up for one of my clients, you installed Apache 2.4.10 instead of 2.2.x - I read somewhere that 2.4.x had worse performance than 2.2.x? Have they tweaked that out?

I have read that special care must be taken to run Apache 2.4.x with WordPress (http://gregrickaby.com/wordpress-with-apache-2-4-and-php-5-5/) - apparently you guys took that into consideration when you built out my clients dedi-ssd. WordPress runs fine there.

So I am looking for a new recipe for WordPress setup, while still keeping cPanel around (clients like it, and it's easier to support, as you know...).

Thanks!

ZendOpcache is faster than APC in my testing. At times near 30%.

It will work down all the way to 5.3 but I've only tested it on 5.4+

I've not heard of any issues here, so have at 5.5 + WP

 

[Dion]

I have read that special care must be taken to run Apache 2.4.x with WordPress (http://gregrickaby.com/wordpress-with-apache-2-4-and-php-5-5/) - apparently you guys took that into consideration when you built out my clients dedi-ssd. WordPress runs fine there.

That's an old article which today comes across as fear-mongering. cPanel installs mod_access_compat when Apache 2.4 is selected, so the old Allow/Deny directives still work. PHP 5.5 deprecated the mysql extension; it wasn't removed. And starting with (I believe) 3.8, the mysqli extension is automatically used by WordPress if it is available. Take a look at the wp-includes/wp-db.php file for proof.

In my experience Apache 2.4 is faster than 2.2 if you use MPM-Event. And PHP-FPM.makes it screaming fast. (Hey, we're back on topic! )

 

[WebEndev]

That's an old article which today comes across as fear-mongering. cPanel installs mod_access_compat when Apache 2.4 is selected, so the old Allow/Deny directives still work. PHP 5.5 deprecated the mysql extension; it wasn't removed. And starting with (I believe) 3.8, the mysqli extension is automatically used by WordPress if it is available. Take a look at the wp-includes/wp-db.php file for proof.

In my experience Apache 2.4 is faster than 2.2 if you use MPM-Event. And PHP-FPM.makes it screaming fast. (Hey, we're back on topic! )

Dion - thanks much for the insight on that article - it had me fearing Apache 2.4
Sorry about hijacking the PHP-FPM topic...
I might start another topic spun around my questions, so as not to interfere here.....
Thanks!

 

[WebEndev]

ZendOpcache is faster than APC in my testing. At times near 30%.

It will work down all the way to 5.3 but I've only tested it on 5.4+

I've not heard of any issues here, so have at 5.5 + WP

Hi Jonathan,

Sounds good.

I's like to find a way to test a config on a KH VPS (or server), for stability, and performance.

What I'm thinking is this:

• Apache 2.4.10 MPM Event (question below)
• PHP 5.5.17 DSO + mod_ruid2
• Zend Opcache
• Nginx ((http://www.nginxcp.com/) as reverse proxy

Can MPM Event be done on KH hardware somewhere?

Would it be possible to set something like this up in a KH SSD VPS for me to play with?

Thanks.