Cart speed optimization

[beyre]

For one client, of which we have loaded 3 zencarts for now, one of their sites seems to be running slow for them and their clients and we are not sure why. Other than the aesthetic design of the sites and the type of products, each of the 3 zencarts have the exact same modifications (addons) and nearly the same configurations within the Admin.

This one zencart in particular when from a HTML site to zencart - so started from scratch. Yet, once we went to zencart, their sales dropped significantly. Checkout works just fine.

So, is there a check-list of some sort for configuring for speed optimization ... things to look for in the server (we are the hosting company), any mods/addons for cart optimization, etc etc.

P.S. I tried posting a similar thread here about 20 mins ago, but kept getting the server is busy message, and I currently do not see the thread listed ... not sure if it will show up later or not ... if a mod sees it, please delete it ...

[Ajeh]

It is easier to determine slow downs on a site by being able to peek at the site to see where the slow downs might actually be ...

[beyre]

Totally forgot about this thread that I had started.

The site in question is www.oldtradingpost.com

The home page is not the cart home page (long story as to why), but is a copy.

Their other 2 zencart sites are running just fine.

I have the parse time displaying at the bottom of the pages.

Both the admin and public side run slow, the admin side moreso.
There are 4439 products.

The original database came over from X-cart ... so there is a LOT of problems with the product attributes: so many are duplicated because that is what x-cart does. Example, option name of color can be listed 10+ times ... and with the associated values. And you can sit and try to find which matches to which. Sometimes none match, so you have to create a whole new set of color option. And can't go back to the original products and reset them because the customer doesn't want to pay for the time involved in essentially re-doing products.

[Ajeh]

All of your images pull from the secure ... is there a reason for that?

Your New Products is 4900+ products ... do you really have 4900+ products or have you never set a proper limit in the Configuration ... Maximum Values ...

New Product Listing - Limited to ...
Limit the New Product Listing to
0= All Products
1= Current Month
7= 7 Days
14= 14 Days
30= 30 Days
60= 60 Days
90= 90 Days
120= 120 Days

On your Index Listing ... do you have the settings for the Featured, New, Specials and Upcoming turned on or off? Off is 0 and On is the values assigned for the display order ... if not using these, set them to 0 for additional speed ...

Have you tried turning on the Configuration ... GZip feature?

While you do not show Category counts, do you actually have them turned off in the Configuration ... My Store ...

Show Category Counts
Count recursively how many products are in each category

true
false

[beyre]

All of your images pull from the secure ... is there a reason for that?

If all the images are not behind https, then viewers get SSL certificate security issues. Doing that stopped the problem. Our SSL with with a large reputable company, so it's not them. *shrugs*

Your New Products is 4900+ products ... do you really have 4900+ products or have you never set a proper limit in the Configuration ... Maximum Values ...

We have 4439 active products, and almost 140 deactivated products (temporarily out of stock, so will be re-activating them when they become available again. Where did you get 4900+?

On your Index Listing ... do you have the settings for the Featured, New, Specials and Upcoming turned on or off? Off is 0 and On is the values assigned for the display order ... if not using these, set them to 0 for additional speed ...

Yes, all those have been set to 0 since I first put the cart up.

Have you tried turning on the Configuration ... GZip feature?

No, because I have no clue what it does and there is no explanation on the panel where you turn it on/off ... the only time I've seen "gzip" is in relation to exporting a CSV from myPHPAdmin.

While you do not show Category counts, do you actually have them turned off in the Configuration ... My Store ...

Yes, they have been set to false since I first put up the store.

Also, we have 7275 newsletter subscribers.

Thanks for your help. Hopefully I'll figure this out soon! Oh, it doesn't matter if we're on Firefox, IE, or Chrome ... Chrome is a tad faster than the other two, but still slow.

[Ajeh]

Go to Configuration ... GZip ... and turn that on ... does it help?

4900+ ... 4400+ ... I was close ...

[beyre]

So far, it does seem a bit faster. We will continue to monitor it over the next day or so. Naturally, it's almost lunchtime here in North Carolina and, like clockwork, AT&T DSL slows to a crawl and periodic starts/stops.