Litespeed and cache, yay or nay?

Jon12345

Well-known member
When I migrated to my new host, I took out a years supply of Litespeed and cache for $312 per year. But I am not sure whether or not this is a wise move. They will give me a pro rata refund if I want one.

I got Litespeed because I wanted to have a super-quick forum. But perhaps my money would have been better spent elsewhere? Should I ask for a refund?
 
Yes.

@eva2000 CentminMod (CMM) running nginx + memcached on a 2vCPU will do wonders (as, I believe, but will let him correct me, PDO [which makes it even faster], will only work on 2vCPU).

Even doing tests with minimal users (10-50) on a $3 1vCPU and 2gb memory VPS, it was blazing fast.

It takes a while to get a grasp of, but once done... it might be comparable to Litespeed, unless you're running 10000s of users, and a refund + tip to him would be helpful as he will answer pretty much every question in detail you ask on his forum.

I don't think I've had an issue in a while... but the last response from him was a book and boggled my mind for a while.

The only difference, if running a moderately small community, in my opinion between the two, is that Lightspeed offers GUI control panels (on the web) whereas CMM is all command line, but efficiently set up to be just as "GUI" like as any other control panel, so to speak. However, in that case, you might as well just run cPanel hosting as there probably will be 0 difference anyway.

Edit: My dev server is $3 with CMM as I only run 1 user (myself) and test users (myself) and there is no lag time between page loads, even with caching off as I need to see real-time updates, logged in and logged out.
 
Last edited:
LSCache is awesome, my 2c is use it.

There's a big difference in a test/dev forum, and a production one where visitors (and bots alike) are hammering your pages. While sure a $3 VPS can be fast, that will not scale well at all, especially without any sort of caching.

CMM is awesome, don't get me wrong, but Litespeed + LSCache is hard to beat. Scalability with fewer resources is where it will really help you, speed is just an added bonus.
 
To add some context, I have a VPS with 6gb RAM and 4 core CPU processor. Typically, I might have 20 logged in users on average, and about 800-1000 guests.
 
LSCache will really help with the load of all those guests. That's where it really shines! It helps logged in users as well, but not quite as significantly as their content is a lot more dynamic.
 
Litespeed + PHP compiled with PGO + LSCache will be super fast. Moved my small blog site from nginx (quite optimized I would say) to Litespeed starter and have seen huge improvement.
 
My favorite config for a while has been OpenLiteSpeed + LSCache + Redis. It works so well.
 
I was told that OpenLiteSpeed doesn't work with cpanel. I am not sure what that means though, whether they are suggesting it conflicts or something. So I went with straight listespeed. Bit pricey though and would prefer free!

What benefit does having Redis have if you already have OpenLiteSpeed?
 
I was told that OpenLiteSpeed doesn't work with cpanel. I am not sure what that means though, whether they are suggesting it conflicts or something. So I went with straight listespeed. Bit pricey though and would prefer free!

What benefit does having Redis have if you already have OpenLiteSpeed?

Probably not. You could move away from cPanel + Litespeed to DirectAdmin + OpenLiteSpeed for some pretty significant money savings.
Redis and LSCache aren't similar, caching different things entirely.
 
Yes, I have considered that. I had a look at the DirectAdmin control panel as was not a big fan of it, but maybe that is just down to having used cpanel for many years.

Does Redis help with caching for logged in visitors? All the litespeed stuff is for guests, as I understanding it, although it does reduce server load and therefore help logged in users during busy times, I assume.
 
Yes, I have considered that. I had a look at the DirectAdmin control panel as was not a big fan of it, but maybe that is just down to having used cpanel for many years.

Does Redis help with caching for logged in visitors? All the litespeed stuff is for guests, as I understanding it, although it does reduce server load and therefore help logged in users during busy times, I assume.

DirectAdmin can look like cPanel. It's much nicer in my experience.
Redis can benefit logged in users. Even on a medium-sized forum (1-2m posts) I can notice the difference.
 
Oh wow. I have 1.5M posts and all my work is for non-logged in. So, it seems like I should get my host to install Redis for me.

When I was weighing up whether or not to make the switch to DirectAdmin, I thought about the effect of reallocating the $30pm savings on the litespeed subscription and pumping that into updated hosting. It means I would have gone from 6mb RAM + 4 CPUs to 10mb and 8 CPUs. Not sure if that change would increase speed or whether they address the bottlenecks or not.
 
Oh wow. I have 1.5M posts and all my work is for non-logged in. So, it seems like I should get my host to install Redis for me.

When I was weighing up whether or not to make the switch to DirectAdmin, I thought about the effect of reallocating the $30pm savings on the litespeed subscription and pumping that into updated hosting. It means I would have gone from 6mb RAM + 4 CPUs to 10mb and 8 CPUs. Not sure if that change would increase speed or whether they address the bottlenecks or not.

Litespeed still is serving content faster even if it's not cached.
What hosting are you on right now? I can get 8GB + 8vCPU for $25/month.
Also, do you know what your bottlenecks are?
 
KnownHost. Blimey, that is inexpensive!

I am not sure what my bottlenecks are. But one I have considered is DNS delay, so I was thinking maybe DNSMadeEasy might help. What do you think? As I understand it, it acts a bit like a CDN where the POPS are spread around.

You have obviously done a lot of all this speed tweaking yourself! It is one of the more enjoyable aspects of running my forum.

I think the loading of CSS is done upfront, as my CDN does not cache that, I believe. I wondered if Redis helps with that.
 
Top Bottom