Blank screen then Page not found errors

[kgamadia]

Hi all, I am posting a solution and a question.

I struggled for a few days of intermittent blank pages with a delay followed by "Page not found" errors when I tried to access my wife's store.

I read many posts on blank screens, though they seemed to be checkout related, and the solution seemed to be to reinstall to fix corrupted files.

However, it was the posts on stores with huge delays in loading that pointed me in the right direction. By disabling the "IP to Host Conversion" option under "Sessions", I was able to fix the problem.

My question is:

Can someone explain how the IP to Host conversion works and is there a way that I can re-enable the setting, but have a timeout for the service, so if it cannot do an IP to Host lookup in say 3 seconds, it can move on to the store instead of giving a "Page Not Found" error after 8 seconds?

Thanks!

Kai

[Ajeh]

If your hosting site has the server correctly setup, then you should not have these big delays on the conversion ...

Some hosting sites have this managed for quick retrieval and others do not ...

First hit can also be slow based on activity on your site and MySQL cache settings etc.

A site that has no one touch it is slower on first hit than a site that has activity as the MySQL cache has been established for what is being seen and viewed on the site ...

One way of testing a good MySQL cache configuration is to:

Go to All Products check time
Go to All Products check time - should be faster
Click page 2 check time
Click page 3 check time
Click page 2 check time - should be faster
Click page 3 check time - should be faster

[kgamadia]

Hi, thanks for the response.

I did the timings you mentioned. The All products page came up the first time in under 1 s. Didn't seem to get any faster subsequent times. But then the site has been used heavily the past couple of days (my wife sent the link to friends and family when it launched.) Someone may have already used the All Products link. I certainly don't have any complaints with that response. Maybe I will try it if we notice a lull in traffic.

After discussion with the hosting company's support team, they indicate that the server is correctly set up, but they do agree that in my case it was the cause of the slow down. Since they cannot do anything different, I will just set the IP to Host conversion to false. I don't really need to know the host when I look at who's online anyway. I would rather know that my wife's site is available.

Thanks again,

Kai