Confused on setup/performance, please advise

[inovermyhead]

First off, I'm a relative newbie here, and not real sure what I'm doing, and this is a long story, so please bear with me, as some guidance is really needed.

Currently working with 2 domains/zencarts in the same 1&1 web space. The directory set-up is creektree/shopct (which is creektree.net) and creektree/wizardswhimsy (which is wizardswhimsy.com). I think it was set up this way originally so only 1 ssl cert would be necessary.

Both shops were on ZC 1.2.4 and each has it's own MySQL DB. In January I started looking at the shops, and started upgrading the Whimsy shop to 1.3.7, and in February implemented the upgrade (it went pretty smooth).

About 3/1, I found that the creektree site's response time was really bad, the main page was parsing at about 8-12 seconds, the index page at something like 23-30. Whimsy, on the other hand, parsed at about 1-4 seconds on the main page & 2-6 on the index page.

Reported the situation to the web host, thinking it was a DB problem, and after several calls I'm still waiting for something to happen, without a lot of hope ... they just tell me the case has been passed on to "admin".

Switching off the new products display drops the parse time 3 or 4 seconds, but that still leaves the index page at 18 seconds and up.

I set up a 3rd shop, shopct07, in a different web space, restoring the current creektree DB to a 3rd DB, and using the current shopct code, to see what would happen, and it was just as slow as the original.

But I'm wondering if 1.2.4 is really that much slower than 1.3.7, or if there's some configuration problem, and don't know where to go from here.

If anyone can shed some light on this, it would be much appreciated. Let me know if I can provide any additional info, this is really hurting the CreekTree site.

Many TIA,
inovermyhead

[Ajeh]

Zen Cart v1.3.7 has a new way of managing the New Products on searches ... it really makes a difference on sites of any significant size ...

It is a good idea to upgrade ... and a search on:
/new_shop

would show many threads on ways to do careful upgrades of a shop safely ...

Plus don't forget the patch at:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56216

[inovermyhead]

Thanks for the fast reply.

So even if the shop is still slow with the new products turned off, the improved 1.3.7 handling code will speed up the parsing that much ? Am I understanding this correctly ?

If so, may I ask one other thing before I recommend the upgrade to the CreekTree shop. There are 3 ( I think) categories in CreekTree that contain both subcategories and products. Can this be upgraded while in this condition, or do the categories have to be either all products or all subcategories before the upgrade ?

Thanks for ignoring my newbieness <grin> !
inovermyhead

[Ajeh]

You should see speed differences ...

Try a test directory with a test database with a copy of your site and upgrade it and try it out ...