Delayed Page Loads

[mrmeech]

First, i apologize for opening a new thread on lag issues. However, i have read through many existing threads and am still left without solid answers.

My store has a pretty consistent lag time across all of the pages and there is a delay when initially opening the site. For example, when i click on a category it takes some time (about 4-6 seconds) before it moves on to the target URL. Once it actully hits that next page, everything loads really quickly.

Here are a few things i have seen as suggestions and already tried:

-Turned on gZip Compression
-session.use_trans_sid is off
-register_globals is on, however. The hosting company will not allow it to be off. From what i understand, this directive can inject the scripts with additional variables, slowing things down...

Right now, i have SSL enabled for everything on the website, and this is because i have yet to go back through my code to remove some hard-coded links. Basically, it is to avoid having any users receive a warning about the ssl certificate. When i visit the site without SSL enabled, i get the same lag symptoms as i do with it enabled. Also, i recently broke some formatting in places by accident and i'm aware of these, but lets keep this post focused on the load speed (or lack thereof...)

I have the parse time and query information turned on to assist anyone tackling this issue with me.

http://www.qcookies.com/store

Thanks in advance!

[Ajeh]

Why is your whole site setup as secure? That right there will slow things down ...

But over all there is no reason for your site to be a dog ... other than being perhaps on an overloaded server or one that is not optimized properly ...

I have sites with 1000s of products that run on pages at 0.2 - 0.5 seconds a page ...

I would speak to your hosting site about being moved to a less loaded server ...

[mrmeech]

Yeah, i've been on the phone with them a number of times, and they assure me that the server isn't overloaded or crowded. So, i'm not really sure what to do now

Do you think it could help at all if i moved the database to another hosting service?

Here are two replies from the hosting company in response to my complaints:

1. [FONT=Arial][FONT=Verdana]As per our engineers, since you are using an SSL connection while querying the database, it would entail a longer loading time. Unfortunately we can not transfer customers to faster servers. [/FONT][/FONT]
2. [FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial][FONT=Arial]You reported about your website is having an issue about latency relating to the connection between your site and the database. Our Engineers was able to find what is causing the issue and fixed it. I apologize for the inconvenience that this might have caused you. We tested your site and I was able to verify that your site is now loading at its normal speed. There is no current issue as far as your MySQL and the web server at this time.
   
   However, it is our duty to provide you with outstanding support and great products. I have optimized your database associated with your hosting account. Tables of your database are now up to date which results the queries to your database to process faster. The pages of your site is loading properly.[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]
   [FONT=Arial]Please let us know if you are still experiencing delay. This database maintenance should be done at least once a month, or as often as you need, depending on the traffic of your site or loads you put into your database. Maintenance are usually done to keep the user experience at the most optimum levels.
   [/FONT]

[Kim]

The question still remains ... Why are you running the whole site under SSL? Zen Cart is smart and knows which pages to run SSL and which to use regular HTTP. It will usually make a difference in your speed.

[mrmeech]

The question still remains ... Why are you running the whole site under SSL? Zen Cart is smart and knows which pages to run SSL and which to use regular HTTP. It will usually make a difference in your speed.

Well, i was going to start another post for this, but i have had the whole site as secure because many of the images in my template folder are not being converted to SSL by Zen Cart. Therefore when people to go log in and the site tries to be secure, and not all of it is, the user is prompted with a warning that not everything is secure on the page. So, to avoid this, i had the whole site as secure in the meantime.

I just changed the config file to let Zen Cart run SSL when it needs, and if you go to my site you should be able to see what i am talking about.

I apologize if any of this is sounding silly, and really do appreciate your help in the matter.

[Kim]

You have some sort of "disable" right click script - if you remove that does your SSL work?

[mrmeech]

You have some sort of "disable" right click script - if you remove that does your SSL work?

No, i'm still having the same issue with images in my template's button folder not turning into SSL when its supposed to be :/ The right click script is removed now...

[Ajeh]

Do you have a setting in your Control Panel about hotlinks protection? Is it perhaps blocking your own secure site?

[mrmeech]

Do you have a setting in your Control Panel about hotlinks protection? Is it perhaps blocking your own secure site?

There is nothing in my control panel referencing that, but i did contact tech support and they confirmed that there is no hotlinks protection on my site.

Do you think it is more likely that it is the PHP server or the database that is slowing the site down?

[Website Rob]

First load:
Parse Time: 7.243 - Number of Queries: 55 - Query Time: 1.1321357394714
Second load:
Parse Time: 2.775 - Number of Queries: 54 - Query Time: 0.16077435176086
Third load:
Parse Time: 2.800 - Number of Queries: 54 - Query Time: 0.2032848973999


That tells us the story right there. I don't care what your Hoster says, when after the first page load it takes more than 1 sec for parse time, you know you are on a slow Server.

And why the need for a Shared SSL? This also slows things down because the Server used is slow itself. Unfortunately, in this case, even a Dedicated SSL would not help the speed but is definitely preferable over a Shared at anytime.

You also might want to pop over to http://htmlhelp.com/tools/ and have a look at correcting some of the HTML & CSS erros within your code.