Hello there.
I use VM 2.6.x and joomla 2.5.x. I also use a bought one-page-checkout plugin (i don't know if it matters).
Please visit this link http://petamazon.gr/test/ (http://petamazon.gr/test/)
Then from main menu (green one), go to 2nd menu item (ΣΚΥΛΟΣ), then at drop down to first menu item (Σκυλοτροφές) and again at the drop down to first menu item (Ξηρά τροφή).
Then wait. I think that it takes too long in order for this page, or any other product page to load.
At the exact same server, i have another e-shop (VM 2.6.x and joomla 2.5.x) that works perfectly referring to loading speed, with the same amount of products and filters also.
I contacted template's designer and he told me that at his demo site, its working really fast and its true.
I have enabled css compression from template and gzip compression and cache from joomla.
Any ideas?
Thank you in advance
What happens if you disable css compression and gzip compression and only use Joomla conservative cache? One time I clicked your slow page, it loaded 1.2 mb from cache. The problem seems to be primarily slow loading images, for which gzip doesn't really make sense (jpg already is an effective image compression) and your server might need too much time to compress things.
I would suggest to use the Firefox browser plugin "Firebug" which will give you some ideas where to look for problems.
An article about how to use it is for example this one: http://www.jeremyzerr.com/using-firebug-figure-out-why-your-website-running-slow
I now use http://www.webpagetest.org to check page speed. This shows over 9secs load time for the homepage on a fast cable connection. 1.04Mb of images and over 500Kb JavaScript, 88Kb css files etc. That is lots of bells & whistles!
or https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpetamazon.gr%2Ftest%2F&tab=desktop
very poor result
I use a script on my sites called smartoptimizer - gives a measureable repeatable speed increase in Google Speed - if you feel that this is important and u can get it to work on your server
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=120309.msg409850#msg409850
But the easiest way is always good quality hosting - heavy sites (as Jenks pointed out) need plenty of resources - $10 host gives a $10 load time
Looks like i had to compress all product and site images, re-upload and then after monitoring add stuff inside web.config file.