Website loads VERY slowly - any suggestions?

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Hi everyone, my website loads very slowly since I put up my C5.

I do have a redirect pointing from my root to my C5 directory, but if you pull up the C5 directory from the get go, it takes at least 20 seconds to load up and my home page is not heavy on graphics.

Any suggestions?

www.www.studiosuzette.com/site/...

suzykaploozie
 
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
wow that is amazingly slow, its not showing any errors, you have eaccelerator installed?
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
I don't know how to answer if that's installed on my host.

I host with FatCow.com - is this a server side script they would need to install or would I be able to do it?

Never used it before.

Suzy
elyon replied on at Permalink Reply
elyon
Where is your database hosted? Is it on the same host?

The last site I had which was incredibly slow had the database on a different server, so the server had a lot of lag time every time it made a database request.

The solution, of course, was to move the client to a new server where they could host the site and the database.
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
Hi elyon,

Thanks for your response. Yes, the database is hosted on the same server. =\
Tony replied on at Permalink Reply
Tony
yeah, that is a tad bit slow for me too. not too bad though.

if you've got firefox's firebug (you should get it if not), you might want to try looking at the "Net" tab. it'll help you determine what elements are taking the longest in the load process. using this option is slow, so you should only enable while testing, then turn it back off. Clear your cache, then run it, and it'll tell you exactly how long each of your assets are taking to load. (btw, this was acting up for me today, had to close it and reopen it a few times to get it to show all the assets).

there's also another firefox plugin that i really like called yslow that's probably better kind of thing too, that places a little more emphasis on the processing time of loading scripts etc.

so the initial request for the main page took 12 secs, and looking at the other assets on your site, nothing is really that excessive, so the lag might have something to do with your host, &/or dns lookups, or something weird happening with concrete. is caching enabled on your site (through dashboard/settings)? if not turn it on.

it seems like you could probably optimize/compress your images a bit more though. For example, the main images in the slideshow block have a whole bunch of unneeded white space around them, and end up being about 100k each. you could reduce this by cropping them a lot tighter, then added some top and left padding to that block to get the same placement.

nice looking site btw.
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
Hi Tony,

Thanks for the compliment :)

I will take all your suggestions into consideration this evening and download those add-ons. I'll post my findings here.

If anyone else has any suggestions, keep bringing them incase I don't get anywhere with the add-ons.

Thanks to everyone for your willingness to help.

Suzy
Remo replied on at Permalink Reply
Remo
I had a quick look at your site. What Tony wrote is of course correct but I'm quite sure that your site will still be slow, even if you reduce the size of your pictures.

I had to wait about 12 seconds too. If your server needs 12 seconds to generate a single concrete5 page you won't get a much better performance, no matter what you do.

Concrete5 is certainly slower than a static html page but having such a nice and userfriendly interface with blocks and packages is always slower than a static page. I'd consider working with a different hoster...

eAccelerator won't be supported in the future by the way. They decided to remove a few functions needed for caching. Looking for APC as it will be supported in v5.4 of concrete5
Shotster replied on at Permalink Reply
Shotster
Judging from the screen captures on your homepage, it appears you're on a Mac using Safari. It too has some decent profiling, debugging, and analysis tools. If you're running the latest version of Safari, go to the advanced tab in the preferences and enable the "Develop" menu. You can then show the Web Inspector and see which resources are taking longest to load. It appears to be the images. And since they are 24-bit PNG's with an alpha channel, cropping them tighter will likely have minimal effect on the size of the files, as you'll just be eliminating some transparency. However, you could probably reduce their size to 1/4 - 1/3 of their current size by saving them in a different format. You would of course have to use a background matte to match the gradient background on your homepage.

Five 20-25 KB images will certainly load faster than five 80-100 KB images, but I suspect that will not completely solve your problem since other pages on your site also load slowly - unacceptably slow in my opinion. And since you're selling web-related services, I'd make performance a priority. I'd be asking my hosting provider what's causing the sluggishness and possibly be looking for another hosting provider.

BTW, very nice looking site.

-Steve
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
Hi Steve,

Thanks for the compliment, means a lot to hear such wonderful comments from other people - we always judge ourselves less than what other people see.

I am on a mac and I will try the suggestions you gave by looking through Safari.

I just recently switched hosts (within the last 6 months). I did call them to discuss my issue and they basically said "tough tu-tus", there's nothing they can do because I am on a shared hosting plan and I am sharing bandwith with others, so they suggested upgrading to a VPS - I can't justify an upgrade to a private server for 10 megs worth of content on my site.

However, I am glad to hear that it's not anything in C5 that's causing the problem. I push C5 to everyone I can because I absolutely love it.

It's worth to note that I used to run another C5 site on another web host and never encountered this issue - so you all just may be right, I might have to start looking for another hosting provider - or just host it on C5's servers. We need a C5 affiliate program so I can promote C5 hosting to my clients as well.

You guys have been wonderful and I greatly appreciate your feedback and help.

My very best regards,

Suzy
kirkroberts replied on at Permalink Reply
kirkroberts
Reviving an old thread just to chip in that your hosting does matter big-time in terms of c5 speed.

I had a client on Media Temple's grid-server that I switched to c5's hosting (the starter package) and the speed upgrade was impressive. Other hosts I've seen recommended on the forums are Bluehost, HostGator, and A2.

It's a pain to switch hosts but well worth it when the speed of your site jumps.
ScottC replied on at Permalink Reply
ScottC
yeah the grid server sucks, the dv's aren't bad, but the grid is.
ScottC replied on at Permalink Reply
ScottC
this took 20 seconds to load.
krissiecope replied on at Permalink Reply
Seriously beautiful site!

I am having the same problem. Are you still with FatCow?

I just switched to FatCow a few months ago and have had annoying problems, but this might be the straw. I'm creating a site with C5 for a client hosted with FatCow and it is INCREDIBLY slow.
ThemeGuru replied on at Permalink Reply
ThemeGuru
If its loading slow than its probably your server.

I was looking at quite a few hosts and right now hostgator seems the best.

That being said 5.4.1 release is much faster. So maybe there's a brighter outlook on the situation. You might want to test the better in the downloads area.
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
Hi krissiecope,

I'm sorry for my delay in answering. I've had a chaotic week.

Yes, I'm still with FatCow and still having the same problem. I've complained countless times with no help or fix. At one point they said they were having a corrupt MySQL issue but that was months ago and my site is still hella slow.

I haven't had the time to move my site over to the new hosting I bought at GoDaddy but I will tell you that I installed C5 on their budget hosting plan and it flies. I'm waiting for my prepaid hosting to run out with FatCow to cancel altogether.

I'm sorry I don't have any good news for you - or a fix.

Oh, and thanks much for the compliments on my site design :)

~Suzy
Mnkras replied on at Permalink Reply
Mnkras
i tried contacting them and they wouldn't show me a phpinfo because i don't host with them >.< could you post a link to one?

if the db isn't on the same server as the site (not localhost) that can really slow it down
novelnova replied on at Permalink Best Answer Reply
novelnova
I've had a very similar problem with a slow site, I've made the following changes and it seems to be working quicker.

1. Turn of Site Statistics Dashboard->SitewideSettings->Track Statistics

2. Turn off logging in “Log Application Exceptions” Dashboard->SitewideSettings->Debug

3.Have the lastest version of concrete5 and turn on fullpage caching. Dashboard->Sitewidesettings->Speed Settings
I put my on Enabled in all cases (Emergency Cache Mode) and Full Page Cache Lifetime->Until manually cleared

4. Add following line to config/site.php
define('CACHE_FRONTEND_OPTIONS', serialize(array('automatic_cleaning_factor' => 0)));

5. I used firebug in firefox to see if any files aren't loading properly and corrected them. This seemed ot make a big difference.

I notice in yours the file Helvetica.tff is not found it is looking for it herehttp://studiosuzette.com/site/themes/StudioSuzette/http://www.studi...

I think and don't quote me on this but broken links to files affect the caching system?

6. (optional) The other thing I did was remove the links to the block independent style sheets, I did this by going to concrete/libraries/block_view_template.php line 34

and commenting out
'CSS' => 'view.css',

like

private $itemsToCheck = array(
/* 'CSS' => 'view.css', */
'JAVASCRIPT' => 'view.js'
);


Hope this helps.
suzykaploozie replied on at Permalink Reply
suzykaploozie
Thank you for your help!
madeforspace replied on at Permalink Reply
madeforspace
Wow, thanks for those tips novelnova, just tried some of them out on my dev site and already I see an improvement.

My initial load into your site was still a bit slow Suzy (I agree it's a neat site) so I don't know if your still struggling with your hoster or have tried any of novelnova's tips.
Sear replied on at Permalink Reply
Excellent tips! Thanks!
mikefatty replied on at Permalink Reply
mikefatty
Hi awesome TIPS!!!! my site improved like 80% faster! your are the man!!! thx again!
novelnova replied on at Permalink Reply
novelnova
I also found a helpful thread on gzip which has helped my site no end.

http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/chat/gzip-and-concrete5/#...

Gzip is explained here
http://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-optimize-your-site-with-...
lackadaize replied on at Permalink Reply
lackadaize
This was incredibly helpful. Best answer times ten.
bjalexander replied on at Permalink Reply
bjalexander
This is still helpful more than 4 years after you posted it. Thank you!