performance issues, mediatemple hosting & alternatives

**grail21** · 30 Nov 2006, 03:27 AM

Hey All
Here's my issue: I'm using MediaTemple as my hosting provider, and over the past 6 years, they've been great, I really have liked their hosting/level of tech support. Recently they introduced a new hosting product called the GridServer, which I upgraded to because of the promise of faster speeds, better stability and a host of other great new features. One of these new features was a one click install of ZenCart. I had already been planning to use ZenCart and had played around with it already and I love it as a shopping cart, so I was sold. The one click install just made my life easier… or so I thought.

Since the implementation (and my upgrade) to the grid server, their reliability has been pretty spotty - databases going offiline almost on a daily basis (for short periods) and other reliability issues that I won't go into here, but essentially their service has not been up to par. Worst of all, my zen cart runs like a turtle on downers - it's excruciatingly slow. So slow that I haven't felt comfortable promoting it on my site - essentially leaving it offline (although still accessible). I've been holding out for MediaTemple to make things right, but it's been over a month, and while things have gotten better on other fronts, ZenCart performance issues have still not been resolved. I really need to get my store up and running soon. I'm sitting on a bunch of stock and have plans to introduce new products, but that's futile without a store. So I'm left with a few options which I'd like to get your feedback on, and maybe you folks might come up with some options I haven't thought of:

a) Switch Hosting companies: Trust me, I'm on the edge of doing this, if it weren't for the usually great customer service and tech support MediaTemple has, and the fact that I know eventually they will get the Grid Server working as it should be with all the reliability of their past hosting products. Also, the process of moving all my websites, switching my DNS, etc - it's not something I would look forward to nor really something I want to undertake right now. However, this is an option I'm considering. Anyone have any experience with dreamhost? They seem to have a great product, but I've haven't heard tons of glowing reviews.

b) Use another shopping cart, at least temporarily until the performance of my zencart store is up to snuff. I've looked at cubecart, but still remember about some security issues I heard about on their previous versions. Not sure if that's been fixed or not. I've also read about QuickCart, but don't really know much about it. Any recommendations?

c) Maybe I'm missing something, or the one click install from MediaTemple is flawed, but is there something I could change in my ZenCart to possibly make it perform better? I really don't think this is something that's going to fix my issue as mediatemple has stated they're having performance issues with MySql, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Well, that's my story, if you want to see the performance issues for yourself, you can check http://www.knucklebusterinc.com/shop/

Any feedback or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Grail

**Kim** · 30 Nov 2006, 05:32 AM

Some of the performance issues are yours. Your site needs optimizing badly. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/s...rinc.com/shop/

**Website Rob** · 30 Nov 2006, 06:46 AM

The one-click installs are a handy feature but should only be used for testing out a script. Once you know you will use it, uninstall it and manually install it -- either yourself or have someone do it for you.

We offer one-click installs as well and I know from experience, the installer does not always get things right. And as pointed out by Kim, optimizing your images would definitely help.

Total size of your images is 400836 bytes.

**grail21** · 1 Dec 2006, 02:22 AM

Thanks for the tips, they're greatly appreciated. That weboptimization site is pretty handy - had no idea about my image sizes, looks like I uploaded the wrong files. Anyway, I went ahead and removed that whole install and reinstalled it manually instead of using the one click. I then removed a whole bunch of side boxes and didn't add any products - still the same speed issues. So while my previous store was in desperate need of some optimizing, the core issue still seems to be my web hosting company. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do, aside from writing a lengthy letter to my hosting company explaining my issues and unhappiness, but I doubt that's really going to resolve any of my core issues.

**Website Rob** · 1 Dec 2006, 02:39 AM

Although the Ping times seem a bit high, you can determine if the slowness is due to the PHP or mySQL side of things.

Admin > Configuration > Logging: Display The Page Parse Time = true

Once the above is set, you look at the very bottom of your page. Load times should tell where the slowness problem is coming from. Ideally, load time should be less than one second for both.

**grail21** · 1 Dec 2006, 02:51 AM

Hi Rob
Thanks for the tip
This is what is shown at the bottom of my page:
Parse Time: 1.258 - Number of Queries: 51 - Query Time: 0.063361277770996

I had someone else check it as well and they got:
Parse Time: 7.602 - Number of Queries: 52 - Query Time: 0.10715181596375

The first page still feels sluggish, but once I click around to other pages, things speed up... for instance, after a few clicks, this is what's shown:
Parse Time: 0.339 - Number of Queries: 42 - Query Time: 0.039128045028687

That's not so bad, and it feels snappy, but keep in mind, I don't have any products in my store and haven't customized the template at all. This is still a empty and clean install.

Am I over reacting here? Should the main page take that long to load? Is this something that I can fix or is incorrect in my settings/install or is it something php/mysql based?

thanks for all the help.

**Merlinpa1969** · 1 Dec 2006, 04:18 AM

I am on a 5 MB Cable and this is what I got

Parse Time: 6.570 - Number of Queries: 107 - Query Time: 0.068251319839477

you may want to take a look Here

**Website Rob** · 1 Dec 2006, 06:43 AM

Parse times show the problem is with Apache/PHP and not mySQL, so that answer the question of where the slowness problem is. If your Hosting Control Panel provides information on Server load, be interesting to know what it is.

To give a comparison, this is from a default 1.3.6 full Catalog install:

Parse Time: 0.529 - Number of Queries: 840 - Query Time: 0.21197919146728
Server Load: 0.13

**invision** · 12 Jun 2008, 09:50 PM

I know this is an old thread, but my zen-cart installation at Media Temple is running seriously slow as well. I'm running zen-cart 1.3.8a/zenmagick 0.9 and several mods. My images have been optimized, but the load times are still extremely slow. I have maybe 50-60 products with several attributes (some with attribute images).

You can view the site at http://www.buycheer.com/cart/.

Here are some of the parse times (enabled to show at page bottom):
Category page (11 items):
Queries: 123; Query Time: 0.3829; Page Execution Time: 10.0955

Category page (16 items):
Queries: 159; Query Time: 0.365; Page Execution Time: 12.584;

product page:
Queries: 1682; Query Time: 2.7813; Page Execution Time: 7.8124;

product page:
Queries: 1640; Query Time: 2.8601; Page Execution Time: 13.1779;

Not sure why the database is being hit for so many queries for the product pages...
I've already tested several pages at http://www.websiteoptimization.com and get a decent grade, just some flak about too many objects on some of the pages.

Either way, other than switching hosts, are there optimization steps I'm missing? As I mentioned, my images are already optimized (can't really reduce them much more without destroying quality w/JPG compression), I have GZip compression turned on. Is there a php or apache setting that will help speed up the site?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.