Slow site!

**willabbott** · 23 Feb 2007, 04:29 PM

Hey all... I've done some digging into what makes zen cart slow in some instances, and believe mine is my service provider and the SQL server (based off previous threads) however I wanted to have some of you that know more, look at it, and just see if that is for sure what it looks like to you, or if you feel something else is going on.

I've checked about all I can, the site uses about 60products, and the database is only 1.2MB or so... I host a different site using Invision power board on a different domain, with a 40-50MB database (which appears to be on the same SQL Server, but different apache server) which is fast.

http://www.ofagear.com

Please check it, and look to see if something sends up a red flag to you aside from it being an SQL server configuration issue... also if there are specific things I can tell them I've been told to have checked in the SQL config, please let me know... they have already suggested they may have to move the site to a different server... when I first installed the site seemed pretty quick, but has definitely slowed down, including the admin section, which leads me to believe it's the SQL as I only did appearance mods to the site, and didn't touch any admin files

I have tried turning images off, utilizing the gzip, going back to the default template (in case I messed something up), etc just to check, the most speed improvement I seem to be able to make is around 1 second, but with load times near 30seconds total, 1 second is nothing.

I'm working with the hosting provider regarding the problem (Dreamhost) they say they have similar reports, but have not been able to nail down the problem, even though I told them I've heard its an SQL server configuration issue, and it's obvious its a database problem due to the "query time" at the bottom of the page, they wanted to make sure it was entirely a database driven site that had the problem, or static pages etc... even though I tried to tell them initially where the problem was... hopefully I made it clear this last time I know it must be the database, since the parse time is only on average .5-1seconds longer than the query time.

Thanks.

**bmhayes** · 23 Feb 2007, 11:09 PM

Some of your images need optimization, or consider use of IH2 or the seperate _MED and _LRG images. Several of the thumbs have file sizes that are much larger than needed. You can also remove the category counts for a little help.

Overall your host may be the problem, just search the forums for your host and decide for yourself from the numerous posts concerning server speeds performance issues. Check out the certified hosts, i was experiencing some of the same issues you are describing changed to a properly setup server, it was easy and i have not had any problems with performance since.

**willabbott** · 23 Feb 2007, 11:53 PM

Yeah, thanks...

I haven't looked into how to work with the different sized images yet... I had just seen it wanted an image, and so I gave it what I had, which is obviously the largest sized image I would want to use.

If I turn the images off, the speed only increases slightly, along with the category counts.

I did get an email back recently, and they say that SQL server is actually the lowest loaded and fastest in the cluster. They have offered to do a move of the account to a different server, but it definitely seems that they might just not be set up properly for this sort of set-up... they definitely run out Invision power board just fine, fast, good uptime, etc... but even with a much larger database, probably an entirely different animal.

**willabbott** · 24 Feb 2007, 12:44 AM

After some discussion and thinking we decided to make a move with this site to sashbox, going to give it a go...

Obviously I do need to figure out the images system, however it seems to me Dreamhost is the primary issue here... happy with them for our other site hosted by them, however seems they just can't handle Zen Cart

**willabbott** · 24 Feb 2007, 01:55 PM

Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I make a decision to move Dreamhost starts working MUCH better... the pages that were taking 20-30seconds are now running under .5s most the time with the slowest time I've seen at 7seconds once every 5-10 page loads.

Figuring out how to move the site from Dreamhost to Sashbox is not as easy as I hoped, how strange indeed... it's still not where it should be, but it got much closer all of a sudden.

In fact this morning it's consitently running at under 1second per page, rarely at 2 seconds, I've yet to see a slower page load than 2 seconds. And yet to get sashbox to help me with the move.

**MyGreyGoose** · 21 Aug 2007, 02:23 PM

Hi Will,

I just went to your site, and it's really fast. Which host are you using... DreamHost or Sashbox? My site is painfully slow. Do you believe the host was your main issue or some of the other settings you mentioned?