Hello -
I have a client that is using a VPS from Host Gator. He he also running an application I created on his VPS. The other day he complained his server was very slow when using my software. I checked it myself and it took approximately 5 seconds to load anything from within the software I had built; even something as simple as displaying a small HTML page. To make a long story short, I found the problem to be caused by linking to a missing JavaScript file in my header file. The JavaScript file I was trying to pull is locally. Once I removed this include from the header, the server started running normally again.
I was not including the file using any server side includes, etc. I was calling the file using the <script></script> tags from within the HTML document itself. My question is, why would pulling a missing file cause this server to run so slow? Is there an option or set of options I should be looking at? This application is also on other servers and runs very fast.
I understand that I shouldn't be linking to missing files in my application; this was a mistake. I'm just curious to why this could cause such havoc on a server.
Thank You
Andrew Schools