Faster Profiles

I've completed upgrading all the profiles so they will display faster. Previously they were averaging 2.5 seconds each to display. They now display average 0.025 seconds. A few problems may creep up, please let me know. The load on the server has dramatically decreased, as a consequence all the pages are displaying faster. I also gzipped the web server, something I should have done long ago. This has dramatically helped speed up load times and decrease bandwidth.

I am still able to run the site on two servers; one database and one web. Previously I was running the site on two co-located dual xeon servers, but I was getting creamed on bandwidth costs. I moved to two dedicated servers at 1 & 1 and dropped my expenses by an order of magnatude without a loss in performance. I look back at my expenses in those days and I am surprised I didn't go broke. That business model was not sustainable. I was also paying over $500/day in Google AdWords. I've cut back on the advertising and I am maximizing my organic traffic before going back to advertising again. In my opinion, top tier sites spend cash on advertising like it's growing on trees. If the suits in the corner office let their programmers and web deveopers concentrate on SEO they'd get more traffic cheaper, and at a rate that is sutainable. I am one guy and I have the 33rd most popular dating site in the world according to Alexa. As far as I know, I am the largest dating site run by one person based in the United States.

Right now I am holding steady at 450,000 page views per month. I expect that to increase with the performance boost, and the new year.