Store Speed and optimization

[rwslippey]

Hello folks....

I'm looking to increase the speed of my store... It's loading rather slow... I've done the follow so far


Admin-gzip (on) host does not have this enabled
Images have been optimized(most anyways)
and I've tried the following .... without success so far...

<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
</ifModule>

in my .htaccess file in an attempt to cache some of the files not changed on an active basis...

however I'm still getting slow load times... and using page speed
(an addon for firefox) I still get leverage browser caching....

Any ideas on why this isn't working or what I am doing wrong...

site is http://www.wepaythetaxes.com/

Thanks

[schoolboy]

Who is your webhost?

[rwslippey]

fatcow is my clients host... (this was purchased prior to me coming onboard to do the site work and is paid for I believe 5 years in advance)

[schoolboy]

MOST of the time, slow site speed is due to overloaded servers.

However, if your images are very large, if you have too many sideboxes enabled, or category counts enabled, or have flash embedded... these can slow down load times.

[schoolboy]

Have you taken a look at the site in Firefox...? Something badly wrong there...

[rwslippey]

images were optimized and reduced ( I didnt make them tooo small becasue they are bumper stickers and I wanted them to appear halfway decent)

attributes / sideboxes / flash don't exist

It's just about 9 product images (i'd like more on the page but speed is a problem)

and the header.... if I could get them to cache in the broswer it might help atleast returning visitors...

and yes I'm starting to wounder about their server.....