Table of Contents
The Short Version
PgWebTool is the website system The JCArtes Foundation is building as an alternative to WordPress, in C/C++ on PostgreSQL. It isn’t finished, but it now runs a complete copy of this website, so we could finally put the two side by side on the same pages and time the jobs a website does all day.
Saving a change took WordPress about 256 ms. PgWebTool did it in 9.5 ms, about 27 times faster. Publishing: 127 ms against 9.8 ms. Showing a page to a visitor: 170 ms against under 1 ms. PgWebTool was faster at every task we timed. The details, and the honest limits of the test, are below.
How We Tested
We picked one page of this website, the PgWebTool page, and made a temporary copy of it on each side. The WordPress side is the live site you are reading now. The PgWebTool side is a copy of this whole website imported into PgWebTool: the same text, pictures, menus and design.
Each task ran five times, one request at a time, and we kept the middle result. We timed server time: how long the server works on a request before it starts answering, with the time the request spends travelling over the internet taken out as well as it can be. Afterwards both temporary copies were deleted.
The Results
| Task | WordPress | PgWebTool | Faster |
|---|---|---|---|
| A visitor opens a page | 170 ms | under 1 ms | 170× |
| A page is built from scratch (nothing cached) | 173 ms | 24.2 ms | 7× |
| You open the page to edit it | 144 ms | 29.7 ms | 5× |
| You save a change | 256 ms | 9.5 ms | 27× |
| You publish the page | 127 ms | 9.8 ms | 13× |
What The Numbers Mean
- Visitors. PgWebTool builds each page once and keeps the finished page ready until something changes, so a visitor waits under 1 ms for the server instead of 170 ms. WordPress, as this site runs it, rebuilds the page with PHP and database queries on every visit.
- The first visit after a change. Even with nothing kept ready, PgWebTool built the page in 24.2 ms, against WordPress’s 173 ms.
- Editing. Saving a change took 9.5 ms. At that speed saving stops being something you wait for: it is done before your finger is off the key.
- Publishing. 9.8 ms, and the page is on the website a moment later. No cache to clear, no plugin to ask.
What This Test Doesn’t Prove
Speed claims deserve suspicion, ours included. This is what the test does not show:
- Different machines. WordPress was timed on this site’s ordinary shared web hosting. PgWebTool ran on a desktop computer. We took the network out of the figures, but a faster machine still helps. When PgWebTool runs on a hosted server we will repeat the test on equal hardware and publish the result, whichever way it goes.
- The WordPress editor figure is generous to WordPress. The 144 ms is only the page’s data. The WordPress editor also loads its own screen and scripts on top of that. PgWebTool’s 29.7 ms is the whole editing page.
- So is the publishing figure. To keep a half-finished test page off the public site, WordPress published it privately, which skips some of the work a public publish does.
- Caching plugins. This site’s WordPress has no page cache. A WordPress site with a good caching plugin or host cache shows visitors stored pages much faster than this. On two other sites we run, both cached by their host, the gap for visitors was about 30 times instead of more than a hundred. The editing, saving and publishing figures don’t depend on a page cache.
- One page, one day, one site. Five runs of each task on one page. It is a fair first look, not a lab study.
Editing On The Page Itself
Speed is only part of it. PgWebTool’s editor doesn’t send you to a separate screen full of boxes. You edit the page itself, looking exactly the way visitors will see it: click a paragraph and type, click a picture to swap it or upload a new one, and press Save.
Every save is kept. You can look back at any earlier version of a page, see in plain words what changed, and put an older version back with one click. Menus, the messages visitors send through the site’s forms, and new pages are handled in the same editor.
Feature Requests Are Open
PgWebTool is still being built, which makes this the best time to shape it. We are now accepting feature requests from the public.
If you run a website, or build them for other people, tell us what you need from it. Email Support@JCArtes.Org with “PgWebTool feature request” in the subject. These help us most:
- What you want to do, in your own words. You don’t need to know how it should work.
- What kind of site it is for: a church, a shop, a blog, a club, a small business.
- What you use today, and what annoys you about it.
- Whether it is something you need now, or something that would be nice to have.
We read every request. We can’t promise to build everything, but requests that many people share go to the front of the line. We won’t publish your name or email address.