Serious Delay Loading Pages

[groovix]

I too have struggled with long delays while loading cart pages on http://groovix.com/store/ for the past year. I was on dreamhost, but moved over to sashbox 4 months ago.

At first, everything on sashbox seemed fast. Now, for the past 2 months at least, it takes about 10 seconds to load an average page. Everything on the sashbox server seems slow, even editing files in vi. Sometimes things are fast, but then other times load times are abysmal, taking over 15 seconds measured with time wget. It seems that the server is just overloaded at some times of the day, but since they won't let you check server load from the command line, I can't be sure.

I have contacted their support twice about this, with absolutely no response. I see the "hosted by sashbox" message on zen-cart.com, but it looks like zen-cart.com is really hosted on theplanet, which is dedicated servers:
PING zen-cart.com (70.87.51.220) ... from dc.33.5746.static.theplanet.com

I though that a "zen-cart friendly" host would at least respond to my pleas for help, if even to say "give us $100 and we'll look into it what you set up wrong to make it slow". I can't rule out that its something with my configuration that is slowing it down, but I've tried many tips including different caching methods and nothing seems to help.

I really didn't want to go to a $100+/mo dedicated server, but is that what it takes to get decent performance (<5 seconds to load a page?)
What other experiences with "certified" zen-cart hosts have people had?
I don't mind paying a little more for consistent decent performance and support that answers their customers.

[rotozuk]

Well, I'm on sashbox now and am happy so far.

I just took a quick look at your site, and non-product pages appear nice and fast, but when I pulled up a computer item with a bunch of sttributes asigned to it, it was rather slow, but you do have a lot of attributes there. I understand this to be a normal thing to slow Zen a lot.

When I pulled up a software item that had no attributes, you were once again quick loading.

I'm not sure this has anything to do with the server, but more to do with the current version of Zen dealing with the attributes. I'll let someone else who knows more then I pipe up though..

Sashbox has been pretty quick to my email questions so far. Maybe once I get beyond the warranty period they will blow me off. Even if they do, still much better then Dream(less)host.

-Wayne

[groovix]

Today everything is loading pretty fast. What took 15 seconds two days ago just took <5 seconds to load now. Responsiveness in a shell is very good right now too. Because it can be so much faster on a good day, I know >15 second load times are not acceptable for a product just because it has 10 attributes.

Yes, it is definitely database queries that are slowing things down, and general html performance is great. However, since sashbox seems to run the sql server on the same machine as the server (sql connects to localhost) I wonder if their sql performance can be consistently fast. Most things I've read highly recommend the sql server being a different machine from the web host, but obviously a lightly loaded server running both is better than a separate overloaded (dreamhost) sql server.

Obviously these hosting companies with <$20/month plans cannot give performance or customer service like dedicated server companies, but if sashbox wants to call itself "zen certified" it should at least offer some extra fee options to guarantee decent sql performance and acknowledge customer issues within 24 hours.

[Ajeh]

I have quite a few customers with sashbox ... and many have a lot of attributes with no issues ...

Speed time on 40 to 80+ attributes per product: Parse Time: 0.624 to 2.1 seconds

I am wondering if you are needing some cleanup on indexes ... or if there is something your template has changed etc.

I looked at your site ... and while I would recommend fixing your Categories and Products correctly first ... I would then look to see if the template is influencing the speed/code ... and then look into the indexes as they do make the world of differences ...

While you do not have a ton of products, you do have a lot of Attributes where your speed slows down ... however, I am not seeing why it would slow this dramatically ...

But you mentioned you have something wrong with some code on dropdowns etc.

Perhaps this is causing more issues ...

[groovix]

Thanks for the help Linda, I did buy the zen cart team a few cups of coffee today. I did some searching, but can you give a link to some more information on how to clean up zen cart mysql indexes? Also, what do you mean by "fixing your Categories and Products correctly" ?

I have spent the last few hours experimenting, and found one consistent thing: inconsistency. With my template or the default, I saw numbers on
http://groovix.com/storetest/index.p...products_id=32
ranging from PT=3.8 to PT=23 and QT=0.69 to QT=12.8
Here are the averages:
Parse Time: 9 - Number of Queries: 2804 - Query Time: 3

BUT, the results vary widely and are changing over time, presumably as server load changes. So, you can do 5 loads in a row that are lighting fast, and then later on the page page is dog slow 5 times in a row.

I investigated as much as I could about the server, and it appears that while memory may be maxed out, the cpu loads are relatively low, ranging from 35-60% usage. It seems that the mysql server is always using only 31.1% of just one cpu.

I think what we need here are some benchmarks. I did a completely fresh install of zen cart at http://groovix.com/storetest2/
and noted the parse and query times for the main page. Obviously it could be sped up by removing category counts, etc, but with all the defaults I'm seeing on average:
Parse Time: 8 - Number of Queries: 833 - Query Time: 7
with the best numbers being PT=0.5, QT=0.28 and the worst PT=9, QT=8, so under the right circumstances things are very fast and I don't think the slow load times have to do with my configuration.

Anyone else hosting with sashbox, can you turn on the Parse time display and give a pointer to your site so we can get some relative performance measurements?

Other hosting providers: can you give some average parse/query times
for a default 1.3.0.2 zen cart install with the product samples loaded?

In order for a hosting provider to be "zen cart certified" they should have to meet an average minimum speed for a default cart configuration. What is a reasonable speed? That may vary depending on the cost of the hosting plan, but in my opinion a page with 10 options taking over 10 seconds to load is unacceptable.

[Ajeh]

Could you post your Session Settings?

You appear to have some that may be incorrect ...

As to your indexes ... I'd really have to look at your database tables and take the time to set this up ideally for you ...

[cfe]

Have you been manipulating your tables in your Mysql database at all? I had a performance issue right after transfering all my data from my old Cube Cart installation, and it turned out to be that fact that the tables I'd edited didn't have an index or primary key defined.

You may want to skim through your Products and Options tables with phpAdmin to ensure everythings configured right.

[groovix]

Ajeh: I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but here are the Configuration->Sessions settings from the zen cart admin page:

Sessions
Title Value Action
Session Directory /home/jbpardee/public_html/store/cache
Cookie Domain True Info
Force Cookie Use False Info
Check SSL Session ID False Info
Check User Agent False Info
Check IP Address False Info
Prevent Spider Sessions True Info
Recreate Session False Info
IP to Host Conversion Status true Info

CFE:I have not hand manipulated any tables. drbyte offerred to look through my database so maybe he'll find something there.

[Ajeh]

I am thinking some of the speed issue will result in missing indexes on your tables that DrByte should hopefully be able to get back on track ...

But, the bulk of the issue is the attributes ...

If you are not using a good server configuration ... you will run like a dog with a server that is not designed to give you optimal MySQL settings ...

If you were to go to phpMyAdmin and look at the products_attributes table ... then do a search for products_id 23 ... how many records are found?

[StevenD]

I believe that blaming the indexing in not the issue, the indexing should be taken care of in the database installation, their should be no reason to alter it afterwards, if thats the case the initial installation of the zencart db is wrong.

I have looked hard at the slow loading pages, Linda, i did send you a copy of the database from the glasses site, I said in that email that i believe its all down to the attributes code itself

As soon as any page has more than a normal ammount of options in any dropdowns the pages slow and in my own case almost stop, curl up n die.

I have been playing with other shop scripts and have found the fastes to load my 300+ dropdown options is agoracart, it loads the products page in about 1 sec, against 15 to 70 secs with zencart.

its not my mysql server, its not my apache, its not my hardware, as i said in an earlier post, i have 30+ other domains on that server running everything from joomla sites, to postnuke phpnuke oscommerce zencart and custom php+mysql, and everything runs great.

Infact zencart runs great, untill you open the product page.

Linda, when you asked for the copy of the database you mentioned a newer better configured optimised zencart codebase that was due out, whats happening with that code, is a trial available anywhere.

Because as it stands, i honestly believe everyone is blaming server configs, mysql installs and configs, and noone is prepared to officially go on record and say that its the attribute code which is the cause of all the problems

StevenD