Author: DOuG pRATt

Bluehost drops support of Gzip compression

Last week, Bluehost sent this notification:

SERVER PERFORMANCE UPGRADE

Dear DOUGLAS,

We’re pleased to inform you that the server hosting your dograt.com website will be undergoing a major software upgrade, from CentOS 5 to CentOS 6, within the next 48 hours.

This upgrade includes newer software packages (including Python, Perl and gcc), as well as all the security and performance benefits that come along with CentOS 6. In addition to this, the server will be redeployed with a different file system type simultaneously, further increasing performance.

Although a bulk of the upgrades to your server are being done with it online and functional, in order to safely finalize these changes our Administrators will need to temporarily take your server offline in the early morning hours. Barring any extenuating circumstances this outage should only last about 2 hours.

Please note that while we do not anticipate your software having problems post-update, it may be required to re-compile any module(s) you are using to take advantage of the newer included libraries. We suggest reviewing your site afterward to verify that it is functioning as it should.

The case can be made that the upgrade actually reduced performance, because after the update was run I saw that Gzip compression wasn’t working. In the cPanel manager for my Bluehost Pro account the Optimize Website option is gone, and that means something called “mod_deflate” in the Apache Web server is no longer supported. So I wrote to Bluehost and here is their reply:

I’m sorry to inform you but we did away with that icon as it caused problems with other things in the hosting account, this was done fairly recently and wont be coming back in the near future or ever that I am aware of.

First they were pleased to inform me, then they were sorry to inform me. From this I am inferring the real issue is that CPU power is more expensive than Internet bandwidth. The loss of Gzip means that every character of text in this post and the page it’s on is being sent, rather than going across the Internet in a compressed format that uses about one quarter the amount of data, before being unpacked by a browser. If I want Gzip compression, I’ll have to force it in PHP, then see if Bluehost’s dreaded CPU throttling returns for the first time since upgrading to their Pro plan.

Stimulating the economy

Behold! My venerable and beloved Sony 32XBR100 has left the porch and is now being used by my son for his “classic” video game setup. In its place is a Samsung LN40D630, and this one came without a vertical line of red pixels. The LN40D630 has received uniformly positive reviews, with the most comprehensive of them being at this link. The stand came from Target.

Messachusetts?

Just because I haven’t been posting anything doesn’t mean I’m dead, but I sure was not feeling well for a while, and my voice is only halfway recovered. There are 20 partially written posts I never finished, and most of them are too outdated to bother finishing.

I’m reading a think piece on Slate written by some guy from Massachusetts, extolling the virtues of the state — excuse me, Commonwealth — that I’ve lived in for the past 44 years. Click here. Something to keep in mind is that the wealth in Massachusetts is not distributed evenly geographically. Most of it is in the eastern quarter of the state, and it’s not a big state. Like other New England states, Massachusetts has a lot of struggling former mill towns, whose heyday ended in the 1920’s, when the textile industry moved south because water power was no longer needed.

Mad Men and Englishmen

Tonight on Mad Men I was surprised to hear the original Beatles recording of John Lennon’s Tomorrow Never Knows. That means the show is already up to August, 1966, or later. I’m glad Don Draper’s character is acknowledging that he’s out of touch with the fast-changing youth market.

On the home front, thanks to a prescription cough suppressant with codeine, I’ve been able to get some sleep the past two nights. My voice is starting to come back after being completely gone for several days.

Cold living

I’m suffering from the worst cold I’ve had in years. My voice is gone — which is considered a plus by some, I’m sure — and I’m having trouble sleeping due to the coughing that kicks in as soon as I lie down. This really is nothing worse than a bad cold, but bad it is.