Yet another slow Media Temple site

I've seen this theme sprinkled throughout the forums: shared webhosting makes for very slow loading.

My zen-cart installation at Media Temple is running seriously slow as well. I'm running zen-cart 1.3.8a/zenmagick 0.90 and several mods. My images have been optimized, but the load times are still extremely slow. I have maybe 50-60 products with several attributes (some with attribute images).

You can view the site at http://www.buycheer.com/cart/.

Here are some of the parse times (enabled to show at page bottom):
Category page (11 items):
Queries: 123; Query Time: 0.3829; Page Execution Time: 10.0955

Category page (16 items):
Queries: 159; Query Time: 0.365; Page Execution Time: 12.584;

product page:
Queries: 1682; Query Time: 2.7813; Page Execution Time: 7.8124;

product page:
Queries: 1640; Query Time: 2.8601; Page Execution Time: 13.1779;

Not sure why the database is being hit for so many queries for the product pages. Also looks like the database query time isn't too bad, but perhaps a PHP or Apache speed issue?

I've already tested several pages at http://www.websiteoptimization.com and get a decent grade, just some flak about too many objects on some of the pages, and too large total page size (70k). My experience tells me it still shouldn't take this long to load.

Either way, other than switching hosts, are there optimization steps I'm missing? As I mentioned, my images are already optimized (can't really reduce them much more without destroying quality w/JPG compression), I have GZip compression turned on. Is there a php or apache setting that will help speed up the site?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

(FWIW, I am currently reviewing the zen-cart certified hosts from this site. Looks like the writing is on the wall for Media Temple's Grid Service -- way too slow for zen-cart.)

I requested help from Media Temple (mt) tech support on this slowdown issue. I received the same reply, almost word for word, that this poster in another thread received last year:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95635&page=2

"To begin troubleshooting this situation I strongly recommend analyzing the speed of your dynamic pages using one of the many website performance analysis tools available such as; Pingdom Full Page Test and the Firebug browser extension for Firefox. Below I've included links to these resources along with more information on how to use these tools to determine what code on your web pages takes the longest time to load.

Many times calling external javascript includes or using seemingly small website plugins (that may not been written efficiently) can dramatically increase the time it takes your web pages to load. Understanding the time it takes each item on your page to load will help you determine what code is having the biggest impact so you can quickly begin looking at ways to reduce your page load times.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/BLOG-20070326
http://getfirebug.com

We've seen many cases where a page may take a long time to load and it turns out the main reason why this is happening has to do with calling an external javascript include or loading an inefficient web application plugin. In these cases the power of the server won't make a difference as the results will be the same anywhere the site is hosted. Eliminating these potential causes of slow loading pages will help us both understand the specific problem so we can help make your pages load quickly again."

Amazing. :laugh:

Anyway, as I posted in that other thread, I signed up at zen-cart certified host, migrated my entire cart site over and was suprised by how quickly the pages load.

I'm talking .2 seconds to parse the entire page versus 17 seconds at mt. :clap:

Several other threads in these forums have suggested that mt is the culprit. Now I'm a believer.

using one the tool http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ that you sugensted runing that my page loads in 0.2 sec. but when i run my page it takes long time, so do you think are depends on how updated is the internet explorer that im using that it shows slow :unsure:

invision:

I requested help from Media Temple (mt) tech support on this slowdown issue. I received the same reply, almost word for word, that this poster in another thread received last year:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95635&page=2

"To begin troubleshooting this situation I strongly recommend analyzing the speed of your dynamic pages using one of the many website performance analysis tools available such as; Pingdom Full Page Test and the Firebug browser extension for Firefox. Below I've included links to these resources along with more information on how to use these tools to determine what code on your web pages takes the longest time to load.

Many times calling external javascript includes or using seemingly small website plugins (that may not been written efficiently) can dramatically increase the time it takes your web pages to load. Understanding the time it takes each item on your page to load will help you determine what code is having the biggest impact so you can quickly begin looking at ways to reduce your page load times.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/BLOG-20070326
http://getfirebug.com

We've seen many cases where a page may take a long time to load and it turns out the main reason why this is happening has to do with calling an external javascript include or loading an inefficient web application plugin. In these cases the power of the server won't make a difference as the results will be the same anywhere the site is hosted. Eliminating these potential causes of slow loading pages will help us both understand the specific problem so we can help make your pages load quickly again."

Amazing. :laugh:

Anyway, as I posted in that other thread, I signed up at zen-cart certified host, migrated my entire cart site over and was suprised by how quickly the pages load.

I'm talking .2 seconds to parse the entire page versus 17 seconds at mt. :clap:

Several other threads in these forums have suggested that mt is the culprit. Now I'm a believer.