Tips for big sites?

[jxm28788]

Does anyone have any tips for speeding up actinic where big sites are concerned?

For example, a refresh takes about 4 hours, an upload (after a change to the primary template) takes about 2 hours....

I managed to speed up my refresh by firing up 2 ftp clients and using them to delete the files (one from the start of the list and the other from the end) but this was still slow going as the ftp client passed each delete command individually rather than sending a delete *.* type command.

So is there an ftp client/command that can delete everything in one go instead of file by file?

And are there any network settings I can change that will optimise the upload for lots of files?

Actinic - are there any patches you could develop to speed things up? I am still adding products and could easily double the size of my site...

[Duncan Rounding]

Most reasonable FTP clients such as SmartFTP allow you to configure the number of threads used. This might speed up your deletions prior to doing an Actinic refresh.

[leehack]

How many products we talking John. In my experience, 3,500 products takes about 35 mins for a full refresh?

[jxm28788]

not sure how many products (is there an easy way to count?) but I have a '1 product, 1 section' style site which increases the number of pages.

The root directory of my site contains > 16,000 files of over 200mb if that gives you an example of scale...

I'm guessing that it probably also going to slow browsing down, so I'm going to look into moving some of the files (eg graphics) to sub directories...

[Duncan Rounding]

You can't speed up visitor browsing by creating sub-directories as Actinic will always bundle everything into acatalog anyway. I think (hope) there's already a wish list item to have a subdirectory for images.

[jont]

There was a post by Kermy (I think) about how to count the number of products by looking at the database.

Why and how often are you needing to refresh the whole site? What speed of internet connection do you have?

A change to a quicker host may also be worth considering if you really need the extra speeds.

[jxm28788]

it's 1 or 2mb ADSL, and I don't want to refresh (see other post) I did an update and Actinic decided to refresh instead.

And it still takes 2 hours or so to upload if I make a change to the main template although at least that does bugger up the website while it's doing it...

[george]

Looking at the catalog reports at the top tell you the total number of products.

Might be worth checking if an 8mb connection is available in your area?

I used to hate it in pre-broadband days as, as you say, it stops you using Actinic while its uploading. Ended up making changes in the evenings so it didn't hog the pc and Actinic in the mornings and it allowed us to get the orders proocessed. Easy to forget though.

[acompton]

Don't most providers limit the upload speed? Even though they quote 8Mb download, you aren't going to get anywhere near that on upload. As suggested, might be worth shopping around.

Alan

[leehack]

John you need to think along the lines of brand new site. When you change a template, you are changing nearly all pages and as such it is a little like your first upload. If you view template changes as loading a brand new site, it doesn't get so annoying. A simple update to a product or two, should not be taking more than 5 minutes or so.

[jxm28788]

i think it is 8097 products then.

no, 2mb is the fastest I can get...

[leehack]

If you have that many products, i would expect to see the time you are seeing, nothing out of the ordinary there. You could pretty much guarantee that a broadband upgrade will do nothing as you will be limited on uploading far less than could be possible. Im on 10mb and can never get or give anything faster than 500kb.