For those of you wondering what I’ve done on Obblogatory and here on InvestorBlogger to speed things along recently. I will tell you: I was playing with my other server space at MediaTemple because my blog had slowed to a crawl, and MT were shooting emails at me advising me of the server load on the Databases.

So I installed a couple of plugins there, including one called db cache and my site loads so much faster now. I matched it with a regular caching plugin, like SuperCache or HyperCache and the server just rockets along. Why?

The DB Cache plugin simply caches requests to the database, and the Caching programs just serve those cached files. Occasionally, the server experiences a slight hiccup, but even then I noted that server queries dropped from over 350 sometimes to a manageable 20~50 queries.

I thought you should try it out. It seems to be compatible with other caching programs like supercache, hypercache etc. and when both db cache and caching plugins are used together, the server really runs fast. And I haven’t found any incompatibilities with other plugins, yet.

I tried this solution matched with a different page caching plugin on different sites, and results are approximately similar: Obblogatory loads about 90% fewer queries, InvestorBlogger often loads just 10~20 queries each time. My school site occasionally loads in excess of 135 queries so there’s still some work to do there.

What I do notice even with sites loading so many queries is that the sites still load much faster than ever. I know though that queries can be cut down even more: by adding fixed urls in the header and footer, but that’s quite a bit of work to get rid of them. And subsequent page loads are significantly faster still, as much of the stuff needed is already cached in your browser cache!

But for the sites on Dreamhost, I also added a Database Virtual Server and Dreamhost upped my original Virtual Server Memory by 100%. So overall, any of my sites hosted on Dreamhost are loading much faster anyway. The database caching plugin keeps things chugging along!

For those bent on optimizing every last ounce out of their server, it might be worth doing! Getting a Dreamhost PS Server is worth it for me! It insulates me from flaky software running other people’s sites, it doesn’t cost the earth, and I have unlimited storage space and bandwidth… it’s an amazing deal, for about $31.00 per month all told. With a VPS system, I might actually get to use it, too!