Customers commenting that new site is slow...

[george]

Using the Smart theme. Not finished the homepage yet, but have had a few customers feedback saying that the `new look` is slow to load.

What do you think? And can it be speeded up?

I know about images, less items on page, etc., but I think its more getting from page to page. Sites hosted by Clara and was not a problem with v6.

BTW, I think the text size is okay now?

Thanks for the replies campers.

[Mike Hughes]

'Slow' is an understatement. I just looked and sometimes it's hard to tell it's not dead with nothing happening for 10-20 seconds (using DSL).

It's variable though (sometimes quick, sometimes deadly slow) and seems to be related to slow running of the scripts. Using the direct path rather than via the ss script runs fine so it's either a change to the script causing a problem or something to do with the server. Your cart was also slow so it looks to me like a server problem.

Do you use customer accounts?. If not, you don't need to link via the ss script with the NOLOGIN stuff and can just link straight to the html page. This does confuse actinic a bit when you do snapshot but it's faster and makes more sense to the search engines.

Mike

[george]

I don't have customer accounts so would consider that adjustment if you would care to explain it a bit Mike. Please.

[Mike Hughes]

OK.

Using 'badges' as an example. Your links are all of the form:

http://www.footballheaven.net/cgi-bi...html&NOLOGIN=1

Which just takes you to the page:

http://www.footballheaven.net/acatalog/Badges.html

The first type of link takes you via a script so that actinic can track logged in customers and display the correct information (such as trade prices etc). If you don't need this then you can replace the link with the second form that just takes you straight to the page, bypassing the script. It's faster, reduces the load on the server and will get properly indexed by the search engines.

I'm not sure actinic can create these links themselves. If not it's about time they did so based on whether customer accounts are active or not and fixed the snapshot issue.

Mike

[george]

As these links are generated by Actinic, can they all be adjusted `at once` via a template or...?

[Legends]

Hi

I've just uploaded a site using the smart theme and it is painfully slow, any suggestions as to how this can be speeded up would be useful. My version 6 site flew compared to the V7 new site. Is there a particular problem with this theme or are V7 sites slower in general.

Any ideas?

www.legends-online.com

[george]

I've phoned my hosts (Clara) to see if its a server issue. I'll post any response I get. Was told it would be investigated within 24 hours, bet they would'nt tell Amazon that!

[pinbrook]

I've just uploaded a test site using smart theme at http://www.pinbrook5.co.uk/index.html

All we've done to this site is add products and not much else.

It runs very quickly if you use the breadcrumb for navigation, it is abit slower with the js menu.

But see for yourselves, at least this should be a bench mark

[Legends]

It runs very quickly if you use the breadcrumb for navigation, it is abit slower with the js menu.

it certainly seems a quicker than mine

Question, how do you implement "breadcrumb" navigation?

[Florian]

Our site www.between.co.uk/acatalog also uses he smart theme and we haven't had any complaints so far. I don't think the site is any slower in V7 than it was in V6, apart from the js menu - but I think that's understandable because of the extra overhead.

As for your site George it seems a bit faster tonight than it was at lunch time and it does seem to be on a 'stop-start strategy' - sometimes fast, sometimes it takes 10s before a click is acknowledged. This must be traffic related, I guess.

We host with Verio (UK), but unbeknown to us our site was hosted on one of their parent companies Florida servers. I naively thought that a UK company would physically have the site installed on their UK server farm. After asking them to move it back to the UK response worked much faster (confirmed by our ping times too).

I know it's a long shot but hey, it may be worth asking them about this.
Florian

[fleetwood]

Hi George
Haven't checked your new site yet (and dead envious of all you lot who have the time to develop new looks - I really need to squeeze more time from somewhere!), but Clara have been pretty slow on uploads last few days so it may be a short term problem.
I'm off to have a look at your new look.
Hope things speed up.

Martin

[fleetwood]

Just taken a quick look at both Fottball Heaven and Legends.
First up - nice clean look on both. As you both have them, I'm assuming left and right side menus are default with that layout - looks really good.
Can't wait to get my hands on version 7 now.

Speed seems OK tonight, although the Legends site seems a little bit sticky, but overly slow.

Is Legends also hosted by Clara?

[fleetwood]

correction

typos always happen at the worst places....that SHOULD read Legends is NOT overly slow

sorry!

[Legends]

Hi

Panic almost set in!

No Legends is not hosted by Clara, it's hosted by Cyberware.

I am considering moving to a hosting company that specialise in Actinic.

Thanks for your comments, i will tweek and see if i can improve the speed.

[george]

Hi folks,

Yes, both using the `Smart theme`. The default has the left hand list showing subsections as well, there's a thread earlier shows how to make it top sections only, I think thats best for the homepage, but the full list for the catalog homepage.

The links constantly on the left take longer to activate (go to the target page via a script), and we are investigating having them go direct to the target page as Mike has described above. Actinic are looking into this so hopefully something can be done.

Clara are apparently using temprorary servers at the moment with some changing over happening on the 15th so hopefully the sites hosted with them will see an improvement after that.

Looks like it could be a combination of both thats making mine worse.

I'll post any responses that I get.