Very slow checkout

[jonwilliams]

Hi

My site is almost ready to go. It's not the fastest of sites anyway, but I have noticed the checkout process is exceptionally slow.

Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks
Jon

[Kris]

Your best bet (what I would do) is to change hosts.. it seems very slow on this connection (512 Broadband).

I would recommend either:

Virtual Internet www.vi.net
One and One www.oneandone.co.uk

Other than that, I would get on the phone to your hosts and ask them why its so slow, it maybe that your sharing a server with a very busy site etc.

Better speaking to your own hosts first.

Thanks,

Kris

[jonwilliams]

Thanks for the advice Kris. I have indeed asked the host to comment and will see what they say. I am loathe to change as in every other respect they are very helpful, so hopefully they will come up with a solution.

Cheers
Jon

[garyhay]

Is it a Windows server

[jonwilliams]

Yes, it's a windows server

J

[garyhay]

Hmm It always is. Can your host give you unix space

[jonwilliams]

Yes they can - does it make a lot of difference?

One unhappy side effect I believe is that various contact forms etc on the site which use ASP will not function - I'd have to redo them in PHP (with which I am not familiar) - is that right? (Perhaps a small price to pay if the speed issue is helped considerably)

Thanks
Jon

[Kris]

From experience (with my own hosts with other sites) Unix servers tend to give increased performance and speed when compared to shared windows hosting.

Please realise though, that if the poor performance is coming from your hosts network, bandwidth or server specification, the speed increase might not be that great... but you should notice some speed increase regardless with Actinic on a unix box.

Just my $0.02

Regards,

Kris

[pinbrook]

you can get ASP on a UNix server......it server needs chillisoft installed

[jonwilliams]

Thanks - I will see if they have/will install this.

Cheers
Jon

[garyhay]

but you should notice some speed increase regardless with Actinic on a unix box.

I would say a great increase in speed

[Jenny]

I have a site on a windows platform that has now decided to fall over with hhtp header error pages, 502 Bad Gateway error, cgi time outs. It has been working for months and now it has been playing up for days.. I would change it to a unix server but the guy has just paid £250 (not to ) for his affiliate software to be re-installed .. Any other suggestions.
Jenny

[ditch]

I've had similar problems with speed in the past and I changed hosts and still experienced slow speeds.

There was a slight problem with something in Actinic, I can't remember what it was (it was about 12 months ago), but when I changed it my site was a lot faster.

Are you using extra javascript or dhtml etc. in your checkout pages?

[jonwilliams]

My host tells me that they are planning to move everyone over to Unix soon anyway and will be using Apache ASP not chillisoft, so I will have to lose the ASP forms probably and learn PHP, which is a bit of a pain cos I'm still learning ASP!

Ditch - no I don't have anything funny in the checkout pages, at least nothing that's not in all the pages using Act_Primary, like the javascript for the drop-down menu and customer login.

Any ideas what to do for the best? As far as I can see I should either

1. move to Unix and use php for the forms
2. see if Actinic come up with anything to solve a potential Actinic/Windows problem
3. Change hosts to another Windows host and see if that helps.

Your views appreciated.....

Jon

[garyhay]

I think steve at Harlequin hosts Actinic on NT and its set up correctly