Item with too many option choices, takes forever to load

I'm wondering if someone could suggest an alternative way to set up what I'm trying to do here. All items in my cart load reasonably fast, except for this one.

I want to sell as one item, a pack of 16 total widgets, each drawn from a pool of 48 different possible widgets. So customer A could order 10 type-5 widgets plus 6 type-33 widgets, while customer B could order one each of type-1 through type-16, etc.

I have it set up so that there are 16 different product attributes, and each attribute has 48 options. That's apparently too many options for one product, because the page takes 20-35 seconds to load. Which is of course unacceptably slow.

Link to item in question: (be patient, heh)
http://goo.gl/0G6X

So does anybody have an idea of how else I could set this up so that I get the desired functionality, with reasonable load time?

I'm using ZenCart version 1.3.8a, google analytics add-on, hosted by GoDaddy.

I had the same question. See here.

I'm using ZenCart version 1.3.8a, google analytics add-on, hosted by GoDaddy.
Search for your host here and make your own assesment

@dapperdevil - well, the first thing you can do is correctly optimise your images. Your background image is 35kb, your devil logo is 53kb, the text "Dapper Devil" is 23kb.

Your other images can also be made a little smaller in dimensions - you could then set the bronze/blue side-by-side giving the added bonus of less scrolling.

Do that and then see how long it takes to load.

You could use Ajax to show the relevant attributes after selection - take a look at http://www.pizzagogo.co.uk/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7_210&products_id=632 ... select a size, then from the "Base" choose Stuffed crust

So you could have them choose the token name and then the colour option would display. Notice that the crust option appears a LOT quicker than the long list of toppings.

Can't say how long the process would take for the customer - depends on the server etc.

lat9:

I had the same question. See here.

Wow, 4000 DB hits? Yeah, that'd make a page load slow!

So, I have 26 pages of little squares to click in Attribute Controller... and it resets to page 1 every time you click one square. That's gonna take a while. I'm sure a short SQL statement would work instead, but I don't feel familiar enough with the database to write one.

Off to do some clicking! Thanks for the help.

Ryk, we posted at the same time, so I didn't see your reply.

Thanks, I'll try working on image size if the attribute discount thing doesn't work out. But again, all my items load pretty fast except for this one, with the same images more or less. The only variable really is the number of attributes. So I suspect it's the DB problem, not GoDaddy or images.

I also know nothing of Ajax, so implementing your other suggestion is kind of over my head. :)

DapperDevil:

I also know nothing of Ajax, so implementing your other suggestion is kind of over my head. :)

It's over mine too, but we have programmers in our team who do this stuff. You could also post in the Commercial Help Wanted section.

Sometimes it is cheaper to pay to have work done than it is to spend hours trying to figure it out. On the other hand, if you can learn stuff like that, it's a great skill to have in your portfolio. Depends on where your priorities lie.

Ryk:

Sometimes it is cheaper to pay to have work done than it is to spend hours trying to figure it out. On the other hand, if you can learn stuff like that, it's a great skill to have in your portfolio. Depends on where your priorities lie.

That's always a tough decision for me, because I can always see strong benefits on both sides of the issue.

In this case, I'm happy to report that changing the "Apply Discounts Used by Product Special/Sale" attribute flag to NO for all option choices on that item has made the page load just as fast as all the other items in my cart. So, problem resolved!

That was lat9's suggestion in the 2nd post of this thread, so thanks especially to him, but I want to thank all of you folks who posted trying to help me out. It's really appreciated!