Super Slow Site - Need Help

Hello,

Well my site has been loading very slow the past couple weeks. I have tried using YSlow - the Firebug extension to see what the problem is, and it tells me the following things that I don't understand how to fix.
a. Use a CDN
b. Add expire headers

I have no idea what that means. Newbie here. I have also called my host and they said its not their fault, and they told me there might be a problem with the CSS code.

Can someone please evaluate my site, and tell me what to do. I would truelly appriciate the help very much.

I am running 1.38
I updated from 1.37 about two months ago.

site: https://www.medicinetreefoods.com

Thank you Zenners
Ken

Can You write here parse times and query times?

I've run some tests on your home page and the load time is wildly erratic. For me it ranged from 2-10 secs. The download time for the components,including the CSS, was fairly constant. Almost all the variation was in the time the first component took to arrive, which could be up to 9 secs, which is unacceptably long.

No way is this a CSS problem. And if that's the best that your host can come up with then I'd worry. This is a server issue, and since I notice that you have a GoDaddy seal, I'm rather suspecting that this site is on one of their heavily-overloaded servers.

Even more worrying is that I conducted my tests at a time when traffic to their servers is likely to be fairly low. I'm guessing that later in the day, page load time will be even more dismal.

Sadly, since your host most likely is the problem, I doubt that you're going to get much constructive help from them. I recommend clicking on the Certified Hosts link at the top the page and moving before your store opens.

Before You change hosting company and spend money, check if it's really GoDaddy fault. Check page parse times, query execution times and query count first.

data_digger:

Can You write here parse times and query times?

I turned on my query checker and these are some of the results

home page
Parse Time: 3.185 - Number of Queries: 193 - Query Time: 2.9381921104

**cacao/chocolate page **
Parse Time: 9.740 - Number of Queries: 684 - Query Time: 2.90511204832

I left it on please let me know what you think ?

Ken

I viewed Your site few times today, and I noticed that first page request takes sooooo much time. I thought it's caused by mysql, but it isn't, it's time spent on web server side. Next page requests loaded much faster(2-3 sec), and database was bottle neck.

I'm not sure what can cause 'first request takes forever' thing. It seems that only first request for given ip takes so much time (I checked it on 2 ips) and subsequent requests take 2-3 seconds. Maybe it's some dns thing? Or You've installed contribution that checks visitors ip against country localization service, bots list, fraud attempt etc?

As for improving performance of next page views:
Before doing things below try to solve 'first page view' issue.
Try to install Query Cache (in my footer), if it won't help install Query Log and try to find queries that take lots of time ( > 0.2 sec). If You will not find any, You'll have to switch to other hosting company unfortunately.

data_digger:

I viewed Your site few times today, and I noticed that first page request takes sooooo much time. I thought it's caused by mysql, but it isn't, it's time spent on web server side. Next page requests loaded much faster(2-3 sec), and database was bottle neck.

I'm not sure what can cause 'first request takes forever' thing. It seems that only first request for given ip takes so much time (I checked it on 2 ips) and subsequent requests take 2-3 seconds. Maybe it's some dns thing? Or You've installed contribution that checks visitors ip against country localization service, bots list, fraud attempt etc?

As for improving performance of next page views:
Before doing things below try to solve 'first page view' issue.
Try to install Query Cache (in my footer), if it won't help install Query Log and try to find queries that take lots of time ( > 0.2 sec). If You will not find any, You'll have to switch to other hosting company unfortunately.

Okay I have installed Query Cache and this is here are some results

Home Page Old
Parse Time: 8.445 - Number of Queries: 194 - Query Time: 0.716723315857
Home Page New **
Parse Time: 8.271 - Number of Queries: 124 - Query Time: 1.59303770103
**
Cacao/Chocolate Page Old
Parse Time: 3.588 - Number of Queries: 684 - Query Time: 2.39752518488
Cacao/Chocolate Page New
Parse Time: 1.041 - Number of Queries: 186 - Query Time: 0.5553877211

Golden Berries Page Old
Parse Time: 1.958 - Number of Queries: 282 - Query Time: 1.36603196994
Golden Berries Page New
Parse Time: 0.893 - Number of Queries: 140 - Query Time: 0.538631363968

It seems that only the number of Queries was reduced, but the Quiery time is still not less than 0.2.

Is it safe to say now that I have to change Hosting Providers?

Thanks Everyone for your help
Ken

I changed hosts and everything is mighty fast now

Bless you all

Thanks

Hi,

I notice that you're using full sized images to display all your images, even your thumbnails are generated from your full sized images.

If you used the built in MED and LRG image name functions on Zen Cart then you'd notice yet another vast speed increase.