Setting up a mirror site

[TAKTAK]

No not a site with lots of pictures of mirrors

Basically, at the minute the site is hosted in the USA, which is fine except those users in the UK and AUS are having load time issues compared to the USA (already changed host and back-end engine), so i want to look at setting up mirror site(s) for the specific countries, but i have no idea how to go about it.

Another possible problem is that there are vBulletin forums on the back of the site so would a mirror site affect that?

Any ideas oh wise ones?

[Jay]

the issue you are going to have is how to keep your MySQL databases in sync.

[Moby-Dick]

you could use something like akamai to do global caching ?

[oolon]

Whats taking the time to load? If its just the images you could cache them on another web server in different geo-locations. When your build the page from your database you could reference images from different servers based on the clients location. Try to put as much logic as your can in a CSS, as this is only downed once from the server, this leaves your actual pages nice and small.

[TAKTAK]

Thinking of Mobys suggestion of global caching how much is that likely to cost? (i can't find any base figures on their site)

[aidanjt]

the issue you are going to have is how to keep your MySQL databases in sync.

MySQL has replication features already. And the scripts can be replicated with rsync over an SSH tunnel.

[GoNz0]

how many users per day are we talking about ?

my sites fine across the pond due to the hardware and network its setup on

[TAKTAK]

how many users per day are we talking about ?

my sites fine across the pond due to the hardware and network its setup on

It varies from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dependant on exposure to an article

[GoNz0]

i think a better hosting package is whats needed m8

[TAKTAK]

i think a better hosting package is whats needed m8

We've already changed once from Host Papa to iPower to try and boost things up that way, are there any better hosts to look at for when renewal comes around?

[GoNz0]

eww host papa are utter pants, i bet i still have over 100 emails in my inbox from the 6 months i spent with them, not as bad as streamline though!!!
i bet ipowers not much better to be honest m8, i gave up and moved my site onto works, its a dedicated server in the redbus datacenter with peering to most major ISP's around the world.

total overkill but its a spare gaming machine

its going to come down to money to spend to run the site

[Zsev]

A CDN like akamai is gonna cost a lot and would really only benefit you if you have lots of media files to serve.
I agree with GoNz0 that your problem is probably due to the low quality hosts you've been using. For visitors from UK, US and Aus, I'd say that US west coast is probably your best bet in terms of average global latency. Pings to seattle are below 200ms from both Aus and UK (depending on datacenter connectivity), which isn't too bad unless you're serving sensitive applications. Check out Hawkhost's seattle location or sign up for a test account to see if things improve.