Very slow checkout

[Jenny]

My problem site is with a New Envisage Microsoft window server and not with my older Windows servers.
Jenny

[jonwilliams]

Worldpay just contacted me - they experienced a CGI/incomplete http headers error when making a test purchase. Need to get this resolved before the site can go live.

Any ideas Chris/anyone?

Jon

PS Away now till late Monday - time to forget the problems for a while.....

[cdicken]

My suggestion is to test the site out on some alternative webspace. Do you have any other web space you could try posting a sample site to?

[Jenny]

yes, I have lots of alternative space but just not the catalog itself. my customer updates that part I do the rest.. The site is www.paws4petfood.co.uk/acatalog
It is a site I have adopted.
Jenny

[Jenny]

This is my technical support reply

<<<As I have not been able to replicate any of the errors on the site, I can only guess that you have been getting timeout errors, these type of errors can occur on windows servers as the cgi timeout has to be set very strictly. These errors can happen from time to time and is due to the way the actinic scritps are written. We have been in communication with actinic on this and there only solution was to set the cgi timeout to 900 second which is totally unacceptable and would cause the server to be very quickly overloaded and unresponsive.>>>

This site has been working correctly for months. I will put all other sites on linux server but that does not help me now!
Jenny

[cdicken]

Jenny

I just tried it this morning, and it was a bit slow but nothing terrible. It certainly would not put me off shopping at the site. Has anything changed on the site in the last few days?

[Jenny]

it starts to getslow, then the http header errors and timeouts start appearing left right and centre.. It worked perfectly Saturday morning when nobody was surfing and now it's slow again. Must be the server!
Jenny

[jonwilliams]

Just got back from weekend away. Do you think changeing servers will solve things for me too Chris? I do not have alternative space at the moment but can easily look at this if this is the cause of the problem?

Thanks
Jon

[cdicken]

The answer is a definite maybe - and I cannot be any more specific than that.

There are a huge number of factors which can affect the speed of the site - number of sites on the server, version of Perl, operating system etc. etc. People have generally found that Linux is much faster at running Actinic stores than Windows, but this is mainly because Linux is much better at handling Perl than Windows.

The whole of your site is pretty slow, slower than it should be, so I think there is an issue with your web server not giving you enough resources.

One thing you could do to speed up the checkout is have less images in there, as there will then be less for the Perl to do.

[jonwilliams]

Thanks Chris - I will check out the options.

Jon

[I-CC]

Your problems could one of many different things, the server itself, i.e. windows, the nework, load, available memory on the server or the number of hops occuring to reach the server.

You might want to visit this page: http://amail.co.uk/youget.htm periodically and conduct a check of your domain to see the times you get, you could possibly then keep a logs/graph dependant on day/time to see if you can see a pattern with when the problems occur and then pass this to your host maybe.

Just an idea..

[garyhay]

Why the site seems okay to some

Chris, John and others

When I asked my former ISP to look into this for me it appeared that the scripts just never returned the memory to the system.

If you buy once it will be slow but bearable but if you buy again or another shopper buys it will be slower and slower etc...


They (the isp) were quite happy to lose our custom on any Actinic sites as they could see the difference the U/Lix box made?

[jonwilliams]

Thanks all. Having spoken to my host at length, I am going to move over to Linux. There are a few ASP forms I will have to re-write (having to learn PHP in the process) but this is a small distraction and one I am more than willing to endure if it means big improvements in site performance.

Just a thought: should Actinic be more up front in their literature etc about the performance advantages of Unix over Windows for Actinic sites? A recommended configuration etc.... Might help prevent issues like this arising, and if relative newbies like me know in advance they should ask for Unix hosting, then they have no real reason that I can see not to go for this.

Cheers
Jon

[I-CC]

To be perfectly honest, it is not down to just simply Linux being better than windows, it is down to how that windows server is set up and settings within it so that it is optimised and of better use for Actinic users.

Windows (apart from being the cause of all the pasts major Internet congestion situations from hacked servers) is a good OS to host Actinic sites on, it is just that more Linux hosts than Windows hosts achieve good Actinic provisioning.

In effect, there is nothing stopping you from having a good Windows host compared to a Linux host so long as they operate the server for Actinic use and its memory / Perl usage.

IMO

[jonwilliams]

Yes, in fairness to Actinic, my host is planning to run down and close their Windows servers due to the cost of licensing MS products, and so were keen to move people to Unix anyway.

J