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A Smush.it and CloudFlare Workaround

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I recently started using the WordPress plugin Smush.it which optimizes images for better user performance. Instead of slowing down page downloads with large-but-resized images, Smush.it trims the fat so you download less. For some reason, Smush.it intermittently conflicts with CloudFlare, often times giving errors or timing out.

If you’re getting this behavior, be sure to check out this thread of possible fixes. There are some workarounds listed, and I’m going through them now.

CloudFlare Clouding Pulpconnection?

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So when Dreamhost and CloudFlare announced their partnership, it seemed too good to be true. A content delivery network (CDN), an optimizer, extra security, analytics all for free? I had to try it out, and I did.

A few days after the announcement, CloudFlare seemed to be living up to its promises. But in the following week, strange things began to happen. Pulpconnection responded slowly, not necessarily bombing out as with past outages, but something wasn’t right. Then came the 502 Bad Gateway errors off and on.

Google searches brought up similar complaints after moving to CloudFlare. To help alleviate the complaints, there is this CloudFlare support wiki entry with some performance suggestions. I installed the CloudFlare plugin with database optimizer function, but that hasn’t seemed to help.

Because of slower performance, I noticed a drop in traffic over the past week starting around April 20.

I’m not sure if the service is simply overwhelmed with an influx of DreamHost customers. While I want to continue using this service, right now it just feels too unstable. It’s up, it’s down. It’s working, it’s not working. Sometimes, performance is excellent, but at many other times, even I can’t stand the sluggishness.

Do I keep CloudFlare, hoping their service scales and stabilizes? I’ll give it a few more days before making a decision.

Weekend Slowdown

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Noticed a big drop in traffic over the weekend. This coincided with extremely slow site performance for unknown reasons. Pulpconnection wouldn’t error out as in the past but took over 30 seconds for a page to load.

I’m wondering if this was related to a service issue with CloudFlare. Now that this issue has been fixed, performance is good but I still don’t know the cause.

This web stuff sure can get complicated.