site speed, server average/parse time

[hitch]

Hi, i have a few sites that i am finding sluggish but want some second opinions before i go nagging to the host. They are real slow on the first load and then not usually as bad. I'm sure all the blaringly obvious optimizations i have done which is why I'm wondering about the host and one other time it was terrible they suspended a problem user and it improved well but i don't really know much about investigating it. I have activate the parse time on the pages and am watching the server load. Even when the server load is not high they dont seem great ... or am i wrong?

links are: musicservices and fabuluscious

thanks for any help

[rainthebat]

They take a little time on the initial loading. From what I read in the Zen Cart book, it might be because you have Gzip compression enabled, which waits until the whole page is loaded until it displays it. So while Gzip may be overall a wheeney bit faster, the user sits waiting for the initial page display, instead of watching it load each part.

Give it a shot under the admin->configuration->GZip Compression setting.

This is just a quick guess.

[barco57]

Yes both the parse times on those sites was horrible. my first hit with one was over 6 and the other over 4

[DrByte]

A more important thing to look at is server Load Averages ... how busy is the server?

It's not uncommon for the first hit to your site to be slow if the site hasn't been hit in awhile (while it rebuilds your cache). But, on a well-tuned server that's not overloaded, the delay should be hardly noticeable.

[hitch]

Right now when the server load is low the admin show server load avg of 1.89, 1.50, 2.39 but the server load is up and down quite a bit obviously but jumping at times for short times to 10 or even well above. at what level and frequency of server load do i have legitimate cause to complain?

(the parse times are always very on on first load and then seem to be much lower as looking around the site)

[Merlinpa1969]

Depending on the cpus ( single or dual core ) and the number of cpus this number might be OK,

rule of thumb is less than 1.0 per cpu