I'm currently on a Shared server with hostingrails and I'm finding my app to be unbearably slow at times but running at a normal pace at other times. Is there something in the configuration that could cause this or should I think about changing hosts? I'm using mod rails and I'm told that if I don't have many users it can be slow at times, but minutes?
For reference my app is at www.goldhat.org
I think it's b/c you use shared hosting. Your app is being moving from RAM to a swap space b/c it receives no traffic. And the reverse process is kinda slow.
check the console output, when you access you site using mongrel it shows how many miliseconds took to complete your request, if it is taking too much time, probably it is your application.
it will show something like this:
Completed in 57ms (View: 24, DB: 12) | 200 OK [http://localhost/]
consider other causes, like bandwidth shortage too, if you have ssh access you can check your application performance in your hosting service