Performance issues (My Zen Cart is Slow)

I'm having performance issues with ZC. I'm not sure if its a configuration issue, hardware issue or if ZC just can't handle the products.

The hardware I'm using is:

Dell PowerEdge 400SC (Dedicated)

• Site = http://www.thenetworkzinc.com/shop/
• OS = Windows 2003 Server
• IIS 6
• PHP = 5.2.4 (IIS ISAPI)
• MySQL = 5.0.45
• ZC = v1.3.7.1
• Products in ZC = 4000 +/-
• CPU = P4 2.4GHZ
• RAM = 2GB
  Dell PowerEdge SC430 (Dedicated)
• Site = http://www.usa1com.com (Still in production)
• OS = Windows 2000 Server
• IIS 5
• MySQL = 5.0.45
• ZC = v1.3.7.1
• Products in ZC = 8000 +/-
• PHP = 5.2.4 (IIS ISAPI)
• CPU = Celron 2.8GHZ
• RAM - 2GB

Basically I'm having the same issue on both boxes. On the Windows 2000 Server box the DLLHOST.exe process runs at 100% and on the Windows 2003 Server the w3wp.exe process runs at 100% when products are being displayed. Navigating from catagory to sub-catagory is fine, however when a product is selected it's taking 8 seconds or more for the item to be displayed...

I've check the support board and found preformance issues relating to items being entered under catagories that have sub-catagories. I've check both sites and this is not what is causing the issue. None were found...

Since the usa1com.com cart system is in production and not live, I've tried wipping the box clean, installed the RackStar OS on it (OS based on the Sun Cobalt OS) installing ZC and there was no noticable preformance increase. The RackStar OS does not give me the ability to see exactly what is going on, however the Active Monitor is reporting "The CPU is being heavily used".

Since the Linux based OS did not seem to resolve my issue and I've already paid for Windows 2000 Server for the box, I reinstall the 2000 Server OS on the server and migrated ZC back to it. Same issue...

I guess my question(s) is/are...

1. Am I just hitting the limit of what ZC can handle?
2. Am I just doing something fundamentally wrong?
3. Do I require more RAM?
4. Do I require something like duel quad-core Zeon's or something?
5. Is there an OS that's going to give me resonable preformance?

Both servers are dedicated, so its not other sites bogging them down. I have clean installs of the OS's with all Windows updates and current versions of PHP, mySQL and ZC on each.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

F.Y.I.

If this issue has already been addressed on another post please post the link. i just could not find it.

I tried to provide as detailed information as possible, however if any addition info is need please let me know and I'll provide it.

The https://www.usa1com.com is not in production, so I'm pritty much open to try anything on that box to resolve this issue.

Thank you in advance.

ZC does have an issue if your product has many attributes (this will be solved in 1.4)

Other that than, I have seen ZC sites with thousands of products running just fine.

PS: In the admin panel config, I think there is an option to turn on parse time and query time counter, turn it on to see which is the main cause that slows down your site.

Also, make use of eAccelerator(for apache only) and other caching modules to reduce the load and improve speed.

You may also want to check the up/down stream limit of your host.

Thank you for taking the time to provide some suggestions.

None of the items have any attributes. They are what they are. I turned on the parse time and query time counter as per your suggestion. My initial results on product pages were as follows:
Parse Time: 9.707
Number of Queries: 2011
Query Time: 0.1771518267084

I started turning off ZC options and got this down to the following:
Parse Time: 6.420
Number of Queries: 287
Query Time: 0.17629118643189

Also, as I stated in the original post, the issue is specific to the actual product pages only…
When I hit the home page I get the following:
Parse Time: 0.797
Number of Queries: 268
Query Time: 0.22698464047241

When I choose Categories or Sub-Categories I get: (Or Similar)
Parse Time: 0.815
Number of Queries: 324
Query Time: 0.2069182936554

The items don’t have large descriptions or anything like that. One example is:
http://www.usa1com.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=104

The item is 3 levels deep. (Category, Sub1, Sub2, Item)
The item’s “Title” is 42 characters with spaces.
The item ‘s “Description” is 34 characters with spaces.
Parse Time: 6.071
Number of Queries: 252
Query Time: 0.15698023464966

As far a bandwidth goes... I'm behind a full T-1 of data (1.44MB/s), the sites have dedicated IP's and the servers are dedicatated.
Also I'm running the testing locally from the box, logged in as Administartor.

Anyone have any ideas?

I realize that the page loads quite slow when I have to access pages with image(s). As far as I remember, a T1 connection is great for downloading, not uploading though. There are lots of sites out there that can test your server up-speed, check it out.

Also, there is a mod called Image Handler 2 which can help you to reduce the image size while still keeping them in good quality. I use it on my site, and have images 3-4 times bigger than your thumbnail with even smaller size.

Thank you for the additional suggestions... I looked into the Image Handler 2 mod that you recommended. It works great, however it did not solve my issue.

I really appreciate the suggestions at this point I’m willing to try anything to resolve this issue. Please keep them coming…

I really don't think it’s a bandwidth issue. I'm testing the site while directly logged into it, from the local network (Gig) and from a residential class DSL from my house and getting the same results.

Also I really don't think it was something to do with image dpi, size and compression, (images being too large of a file size) I would expect to see the issue on the categories listing pages and do not. Those pages use the same files as the actual product pages and have 25 images, or so, displaying on them with a Parse time less than a second.

Also before I added the Image Handler 2 mod to the site I replaced some of the product images with the originals. These were 10 times the file size of the ones on the server and I did not observe any noticeable increases in the Parse time on the product pages.

What I did was:

• Burned all the product images to CD.
• Transferred them to a PC with Photoshop on it.
• Wrote an Action to resize all images to 72 dpi, make the maximum width or height 300 pixels, them exported them with ImageReady at jpg 60%.
• Burned all the resized images to CD.
• Replaced them on the server.
• It was still taking over 6 seconds to Parse the product pages.
• Installed the Image Handler 2 mod.
• It is still taking over 6 seconds to Parse the product pages.

It seems like something is getting stuck. It's like ether the PHP or MySQL handler doesn’t like something on the product pages.

Are there any characters that should be avoided in the product titles or descriptions? Things like "&'s", "_'s", "$"'s, "#'s". I'm an ASP developer and know that you can run into strange issues with "Special" characters.

1 suggestion: install Xampp on your computer(take 10 mins), then copy and install the whole current site on your computer(around 15 mins). Is it still slow when you access it directly on the localhost?

Sorry for the delay in posting back to this thread and thank you once again for the suggestions.

It took some time for me to get approval to install Xampp on this box... But when everything else failed I got it.

What I did:
I backed up the database, re-installed Windows 2000 Server clean, downloaded all Windows Updates, un-installed IIS, downloaded and installed Xampp, downloaded and installed Zen Cart and then restored the database.

What I got:
The performance was slightly better, maybe 5%, but still too poor to go into production with it. The parse times for the home page and catagory pages was in the 0.7 - 0.8 second range, however the actual product pages were still taking over 6 seconds to parse.

Issues:
There were also security issues with the Xampp system. I won't get into details but the system is/was hackable even after the "list of missing security in XAMPP" was addressed. In fact Xampp states the following:

"XAMPP is not meant for production use but only for developers in a development environment. XAMPP is configured is to be as open as possible and to allow the web developer anything he/she wants. For development environments this is great but in a production environment it could be fatal."

Additional conserns with Xampp is that it uses the Apache HTTPD. This means you can't run IIS, without IIS you can run ASP, and so on... Also our WebTrends Server wasn't getting detailed information for the log files, which I'm sure could be fixed, but... I could go on but... With all things factored in, running Xampp on NT just isn't a solution for us. I think we would be better just putting Fadora Core on it and since I already tested the cart and had the same issue on a Linux based OS, I think I'd be in the same boat.

What I'm going to do next:
At this point I'm goting to give it one more try...
I really think its an issue with the data in the MySQL database...
I'm going to once again start with a clean install of Windows 2000, install current versions of all required 3rd party software, (MySQL, PHP, etc.) install the zen cart system and then enter only one item into the catalog. See what I get. If it works, I'll start adding product until it breaks, monitoring and documenting the preformance as I go. If it still takes 6 seconds to display a product, with only one item in the system... I'm going to give up and look for another cart.

I'll post back with the results as I get them, regardless of what they are.

Make sure you give your MySQL lots of RAM to work with, by configuring a large memory model in your my.cnf settings.

I'm in the same boat as you! T1 here too!

I'm getting the exact same errors, takes 7+ seconds to load a product info page!??!

GZIP = Enabled (in admin control panel in zen cart)
JPEGS = Very small in size , compressed

Running WAMP
Apache on Vista 64 machine..

I'm going to try it on a standard windows 2000 box and see if I get better results...

jbaggs:

I really think its an issue with the data in the MySQL database...
It is not. Results You presented clearly shows that:

Parse Time: 6.420
Number of Queries: 287
Query Time: 0.17629118643189

Most of time is spent in php, not in database. Check if high parse times are specific to Your template only, or to other templates as well. If only Your template behaves this way, You have to optimize it. If You get high page load times on default template as well, You'll have to optimize product_info page somehow.

Edit: After looking at Your site I think I know what can be a problem: "Customers who bought this product also purchased" box. Try to turn it of and see what happens.

data_digger:

Edit: After looking at Your site I think I know what can be a problem: "Customers who bought this product also purchased" box. Try to turn it of and see what happens.
Sorry, my mistake (it's getting late and I'm getting tired:blush:). 'Also purchased...' box should not be a problem in this case (it usually slows down sites with lots of sales/products because of query it executes, but query time is low in Your case).

Enable GZIP for faster page loads..

I would stay away from xampp, try the newest WAMP , working fine for me right now on a windows 2003 server.. I had major issues with the way XAMPP did stuff, lots of security stuff, and some extra junk.. wamp is pretty clean imho.

Also turn on the sql cache... You can do this with mySQL gui tools administrator.

MySQL Gui Tools Administrator > Startup Variables > Performance (tab) >

Put a check in the "Cache Size" 64M check box..

Save chages.. restart WAMP / mysql..

This is basically the same thing as editing one line of the my.ini file of mysql... you're just doing it through the GUI, I forget the offical ini text.. but oh well this does the same thing..

Finally, if you have more than 3000 images in any image directory in your store.. store/images/microsoft/3000+ jpegs , store/images/large/microsoft/3000+ large jpegs, etc...
make sure to spread them out over multiple directories so that you have no more than 3000 in a single dir.. I have experienced major speed issues when I had over 10,000 in a directory, load times were over 15 seconds..

I had the same kind of issues you are talking about there. Fortunately ( and unfortunately) it turned out to be user error.

Zen cart only has 1 image for each product, which it then can cut into thumbnails or the product page size, or normal or enlarged, depending on your layout.

When/if your images folder contains thousands of images, it takes zen cart longer to load any given product page. You can fix this by splitting your images folder into sub folders. (For example i do mine by manufacturer.)

From there i actually split them into more folders so that there are no more than 200 images in any given folder. If you start doing this you will notice improved load times just by messing with image locations.

The other factor is the internet connection that you have your website on. If you are using a T1 for example with only 1.5 mbps, then you are going to also need to keep your image files small in size.

wow.. 200/ sub folder, ideally that would be best... right now I have a batch file that automatically sorts to sub folders a b c d e f ...
I should make it more intricate like. ab ac ad ae af ag ah etc.. that might trim it down more.

something similar to this

after my automated photoshop watermark batch job completes I run a batch file to put the exported jpegs in smaller directories, I should break it down further by something like..

move ab*.jpg ./ab

then just cloak the .bat in dreamweaver so it doesn't get uploaded :)

I know that magento commerce does this automatically, but the way it mutilates the file names and how it doesn't like multiple pics / picture totally turns me off, besides the fact that magento never seems to work and freezes half the time in admin mode.

thecoolstinger:

When/if your images folder contains thousands of images, it takes zen cart longer to load any given product page. You can fix this by splitting your images folder into sub folders. (For example i do mine by manufacturer.)

Wow. I never thought of this. I have been having performance issues for months. I can't tell you the countless nights [such as tonight] that I am up all night analyzing every single mod I have installed and what jscripts they use...and can't figure out what the problem is.

I have a TON of unused product images, or images from old products. Perhaps I will try to sort through them and see if it helps!:flex:

Hello, about tons of images in one dir, you could try to use Image Handler. It creates all the images you need (in various format) and place them in many subcategories, avoiding this problem (I should check if the main image still being in one folder can cause some performance issue aswell).

Query Cache v1.0 is good at reducing parse times
cache images in htaccess file is another good trick.

Backup your database weekly and then under Tools in your Zen Cart administration section, select the Store Manager and do these 2 things weekly to help maintain the performance level of your store and database. First, the very top button for Empty Admin Activity Log table from the database: Click reset; Then the last selection on the page is Optimize Database: Click Confirm... Do this is a non peak period.
:clap: