Page load times awful-please help

[webgirl]

Hi everyone,

We have been having a problem with our v8 sites page load times and upload times this last 2 weeks. I have searched the threads and have not found the answer to the problem.

We are in process of skinnying down the best sellers and new products lists as discussed in another thread as this seems to knock about 2 secs off page load time.

This is site we have worked on
www.accessdiagnostic.co.uk
however load time still seems slower than it should be

This is one we have not yet worked on and load time is awful
www.value-med.co.uk

We have had server issues this last week (with our hosting provider) and all the sites in question are on same server raq.
The orders through these sites are right down.

Couple of issues-we have noticed the v8 sites have always been slower than the v7 sites to load and upload, does v8 need more server space then v7 ? Would a dedicated server help or is that a waste ?

The equivalent v7 sites seem ok-but are on different server
www.valuemed.co.uk
www.accessdiagnostics.co.uk

Can you see any glaring problems with these sites that could be affecting the load times ?

Any advice greatfully appreciated

We are on phone to server provider daily

Kind regards,
Katie

[Mike Hughes]

The home page of the first one does have over 175K Bytes of images which would make it slow, but not really this slow.

The slow loading has nothing to do with actinic as you have static web pages so i would have to say that it's a server problem.

Who are your web hosts? You might want to think about changing.

Mike

[webgirl]

The home page of the first one does have over 175K Bytes of images which would make it slow, but not really this slow.

The slow loading has nothing to do with actinic as you have static web pages so i would have to say that it's a server problem.

Who are your web hosts? You might want to think about changing.

Mike

Thanks Scott,

We are cutting down the graphics as we speak to try and speed them up.

The web hosts are Low Cost Names

[webgirl]

Who are your web hosts? You might want to think about changing.

Mike

Any recomendations ?

Katie

[Mike Hughes]

I guess you're looking for low cost so why try Darren's at http://www.tametheweb.co.uk/index.html

He's offering a 14 day trial so you could see what the load times are like on there before making a final decision.

Darren is a good contributor to the forum and I wouldn't expect you'll have any problems with his hosting.

Mike

[webgirl]

I guess you're looking for low cost so why try Darren's at http://www.tametheweb.co.uk/index.html

He's offering a 14 day trial so you could see what the load times are like on there before making a final decision.

Darren is a good contributor to the forum and I wouldn't expect you'll have any problems with his hosting.

Mike

Thanks Scott,

I will look at that

To be honest we are now looking for a lot more from our web hosting than we used to require.

We want 24/7 support as well great uptime so cost is less of an issue than it used to be-we just want as near as 100% uptime as possible, great 24/7 customer support and fast load speeds-any suggestions ?

The server was down over weekend and we had to wait until Monday to let them know which cost us

Katie

p.s not really got the hang of the post icons yet-not sure what they all mean

[Darren B]

hmmm OK took a look at the sites and although a little slow to load straight away they seem fine to me, add to basket was not what i would call slow. Just the odd pause as the pages are served

D

[pinbrook]

We want 24/7 support as well great uptime so cost is less of an issue than it used to be-we just want as near as 100% uptime as possible, great 24/7 customer support and fast load speeds-any suggestions ?

You should probably define what you mean by 24/7 support?

do you want to phone at 2am to ask how to set up email, or do you just mean the ability to phone through at any time of day if the server is down?

You will need to look at SLA's ie the server uptime stated by your provider, and read in T&C how they would respond to a shared server going down at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon.

You would pay more for 100% uptime, most providers offer 99.n%

You can only realistically expect 100% from a dedicated server with load balancing.

it is a careful balance between cost and performance.

Cost of hosting v loss of profit if site is down for a few hours

[webgirl]

You should probably define what you mean by 24/7 support?

do you want to phone at 2am to ask how to set up email, or do you just mean the ability to phone through at any time of day if the server is down?

You will need to look at SLA's ie the server uptime stated by your provider, and read in T&C how they would respond to a shared server going down at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon.

You would pay more for 100% uptime, most providers offer 99.n%

You can only realistically expect 100% from a dedicated server with load balancing.

it is a careful balance between cost and performance.

Cost of hosting v loss of profit if site is down for a few hours

Hi Jo,

Thank you for your reply

We want 24/7 support when the server goes down and 100% uptime.

We have reached the point now with several of our larger sites, that being down over the weekend is very expensive as well as stressfull.

Slow server speeds we think are causing problems with uploads, downloads and page load times.

I feel we have outgown the shared hosting and that a dedicated sever is the way to go but I know it is a lot more expensive.

There does some to be an intermediate package of a VPS (virtual private servers) which is cheaper and seems better than our current package but is cheaper than dedicated server. Any comments ?

Kind regards as ever,
Katie

[webgirl]

hmmm OK took a look at the sites and although a little slow to load straight away they seem fine to me, add to basket was not what i would call slow. Just the odd pause as the pages are served

D

Thank you for your reply-we were beginning to think there was a problem with the sites that we had caused so reassured to here they look ok

katie

[webgirl]

Just been on to our hosting company and found out that data transfer on one of the v8 sites has gone from 1.4 Gb in June, 2.6 in July, to 3.8Gb in August and we are only supposed to have up to 1gb on our package.

This may explain the problems we have been having although the traffic through the v7 sites is much much higher and they seem to cope

katie

[Darren B]

To be honest 100% is never really going to be possible, everything go's down at some time. But i understand your support requirements, we all want this sort of service. My sites are not hosted anywere different to my clients.

I have had a VPS package in the past, they seem ok, but they are not the same as a dedicated server, i have had these as well. It really depends on what you want. What sort of bandwidth are you using, you mention multiple sites, poor performance could be down to the server spec and site hosted on the the share server e.t.c

I have been struggling to find an ip address for your domain names, the tools i use are unable to resolve it to an ip address.

something does not seem right with your server, perhaps someone else could check

[Darren B]

we are only supposed to have up to 1gb on our package.

This would not normally effect performance, the host simply charges you for excess bandwidth.

[Duncan Rounding]

...gone from 1.4 Gb in June, 2.6 in July, to 3.8Gb in August and we are only supposed to have up to 1gb on our package.

This may explain the problems we have been having although the traffic through the v7 sites is much much higher and they seem to cope

katie

I don't see the connection. Why should higher data traffic slow the site down - is your host throttling you site because you exceeded you allotted bandwidth?

[webgirl]

I don't see the connection. Why should higher data traffic slow the site down - is your host throttling you site because you exceeded you allotted bandwidth?

We dont know-we only pay for 1gb and they have not charged us any extra