Databases and Other 'Moving Parts' Slow Down the Web, Let's Reduce Our Dependence on Them
Caching of pages is not the solution, just a sloppy workaround that adds complexity and security vulnerabilities (e.g. Squid last week)
The old Techrights front page, which is now phased out but still in Git, was super-light but not fast, as there was a PHP back end and it waited for WordPress (i.e. database) and MediaWiki (yes, database again!) to serve two RSS feeds. So there was a huge latency or lag between page request and page delivery. With the new system, i.e. the static page generator we had coded in Perl, there was nothing to wait for except packets to arrive with the contents of a file.
And it shows:
That's 0.3 seconds from a foreign (to the hosting) country! The static page generator is also used in Tux Machines, so the speeds there are good as well:
We recently noticed quite a lot of Web sites moving away from bloat (usually WordPress) to static and we included many examples in our Daily Links, including this past weekend. Is this the next "hip" thing? A growing trend towards 'greening' the planet? It saves a lot in money, it does not only reduce pollution. █