Site Loading Slowly

Zen to all.

I've got two zen carts, one is loading slowly. I turned on "Display The Page Parse Time" on both, here's what I got when loading a top level category page (these are adult novelty sites, nsfw):

Darene.com (loading normally):
Parse Time: 0.703 - Number of Queries: 1349 - Query Time: 0.176139510559
Giggles.com(loading slowly)
Parse Time: 5.214 - Number of Queries: 213 - Query Time: 4.63873374957

The queries are fewer on the slow site. Any ideas?

In your configure.php files, is your DB_SERVER set to localhost... or an IP address?:

define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost');

(I had one of my site's DB_SERVER set to the site's static IP address and this slowed things down. When I re-set it to 'localhost' it speeded up considerably...)

I looked at giggles.com and noted the template monster template.
Do both of your sites use template monster templates which are image "heavy" and use multiple stylesheets ?

Tina

Thanks for the replies.

My configure.php has this entry:
define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost');

I don't think it's the template, seems to me the DB is hanging up somewhere

Your background image is over 600k ... I didn't even check any of the others ... that is HUGE! Optimize your images.

I doubt if it's the database. Your background image is >600K, and your other images are too big (file size-wise) too.

Nice site design, BTW, TM or not. Much more interesting than most adult sites (not that I've, um, seen all that many).

stevesh:

I doubt if it's the database. Your background image is >600K, and your other images are too big (file size-wise) too.

Nice site design, BTW, TM or not. Much more interesting than most adult sites (not that I've, um, seen all that many).

:shocking: lol

Tina

Thanks for all the input. If you click around on giggles.com it will hang up, like this:

Parse Time: 8.664 - Number of Queries: 213 - Query Time: 8.03878344357
Parse Time: 12.260 - Number of Queries: 198 - Query Time: 11.4462826925

I'm no database wiz but this seems to be the issue, not large filesizes. I'm sure this is losing us sales. Any help would be appreciated. :huh:

Anybody have experience with the Zen Cart Performance module? It makes seom BOLD claims

• Large store with 12 000 products and 1279 categories. Before performance optimization: 4.33 sec - after performance optimization: 0.64 sec, 676% increase.
• Medium-size store with 800 products and 23 categories. Before performance optimization: 2.23 sec - after performance optimization: 0.41 sec, 212.38% increase.

One more time - you are trying to load a page that is more than a megabyte! Clean it up and then worry about other stuff.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.giggles.com/

For an example:

Your header background image is about 191K and about 2"X5".

Now web vid screens render at 72DPI, so any file size in excess is wasted bandwidth/time to load and the above should only require a 50K file and this can be reduced normally by 50-60% and still render an acceptable image so this could be reduced to about a 20K image.

All others are in the same boat

I hear you on the filesize issue loud and clear :wink:

Here's the thing: I can set the template back to Classic Green (with just default images) and get the same doggy performance. :frusty:

Better this morning:

Parse Time: 2.810 - Number of Queries: 140 - Query Time: 2.13269220346

Parse Time: 1.834 - Number of Queries: 132 - Query Time: 1.25857573703

Hey Steve,

I disabled Ultimate SEO, that speeded things up a bit. I might get the magnetic one performance module, see if that improves the speed

Please let me know about this because my sites seem to take FOREVER (at least 5 to 10 seconds) to load up initially. After that the site performs very quickly.

It has to be a database issue or something that's causing Zen to take a while to "INITIALIZE" and not show the homepage right away. After that page is loaded then you can browse around the website with subsequent pages loading very quick.

Anyone know of any fixes for this issue? Here's a good question... when you all go to your homepage, https://www.whatever.com, how long does it take to load? Let's get a good poll going.

Here's a site of mine: https://www.greatcolordesigns.com, it takes a rediculous 21 seconds for it to load for me!!! Now that site is on a VPS that is really quick with 512mb ram. What server specs are you guys running? How much ram? I would think this has to be a DB loading issue... anyone know how to test that?

21 seconds for me, too.

Try turning off category counts in admin, and see if that helps.

Stevesh, thanks for the quick reply! I turned off category counts and still got 21 seconds :-(

Any other ideas?

The database performs fast for other blogs and software I use, so I don't think that's it.

Who is your host?

davemehta:

Stevesh, thanks for the quick reply! I turned off category counts and still got 21 seconds :-(

Any other ideas?

The database performs fast for other blogs and software I use, so I don't think that's it.

Have you tried running it through that web optimisation site mentioned earlier in the post by Kim

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.greatcolordesigns.com/

It shows a number of CSS images as missing.

The other thing is Your background gifs seem rather large, the bit behind where it says "for all the ways you live your life" have you tried optimising those gifs a bit or converting them to jpegs @ 80% quality

Hey davemehta,

I'm still working on it. I installed the magneticone performance module & didn't see any difference; actually it might have slowed things down a bit more, the site having to process more code :(

Not knocking the module, it may work for others but obviously my site has a different issue.

I've disabled Ultimate SEO and Supertracker but still have lag, sometimes 15 seconds +. Disabling Ultimate SEO helped a bit but I haven't gotten to the root of the issue. :wacko: