Speed up Virtuemart 2.0.8e Site. Too many queries?

[kory27]

Hello,

I have a site, and it's big, 50K categories and like 450K products.  I'm running a level 3 VPS with Hostgator to hopefully ensure I have enough power.  It's not terribly slow, but slow.  6 seconds plus on some pages.

I have an included system info, firebug page slow info, and debug info (attached) for page http://www.urbanposters.com/index.php/shop/art, my largest category, below.  My questions:

-  Does an optimizer like JCH Optimizer help a lot for problems like these?
-  Are the large number of queries, 217, the issue?
-  Is it worth the money to buy The Speedbooster, info here http://codingmall.com/products-mainmenu-8/65-speed-up-virtuemart?
-  Do you have any insight from your experience on strategies I can employ to speed this site up?

Thanks!
---------------BEGIN INFORMATION-----------------

System info:

Joomla 2.5.6
Virtuemart 2.0.8e
Joomla Cache and Gzip enabled.

Firebug Page Speed Score of 44/100 (Red and Yellow warning included only):

RED
Enable Compression (I did this with gzip, so confused)  18/100
Leverage Browser Caching (I have cache enabled, so again, confused)  2/100

YELLOW
Enable Image Sprites 13/100
Minify Javascript 49/100
Defer Parsing of Javascript  49/100

Profile Information:

Application 0.001 seconds (+0.001); 1.20 MB (+1.203) - afterLoad
Application 0.046 seconds (+0.045); 5.36 MB (+4.161) - afterInitialise
Application 0.068 seconds (+0.023); 7.87 MB (+2.509) - afterRoute
Application 6.844 seconds (+6.775); 16.34 MB (+8.466) - afterDispatch
Application 6.853 seconds (+0.009); 17.34 MB (+0.997) - beforeRenderModule mod_virtuemart_search (VM - Search in Shop)
Application 6.860 seconds (+0.007); 17.41 MB (+0.071) - afterRenderModule mod_virtuemart_search (VM - Search in Shop)
Application 6.867 seconds (+0.007); 17.50 MB (+0.090) - afterRender

Debug Information - Please see attachment



[attachment cleanup by admin]

[PRO]

kory, I use jch optimize for the css files only.

I got too many js conflicts when doing the js too.

AND:

make sure hostgator has your vps configured correctly. I am on level 6.

Their shared servers run 30MB of ram , and cpu's to match.

You need to be at level 5 to have the speed of their shared.

ALSO: Joomla 2.5 the redirect plugin logs 404 errors with each 404. So when hackers etc try your site it bogs it down. Especially during PCI scannng.

If you are not using teh redirect component, disable the plugin.

ALSO: turn off ALL logging software on your server that you are not going to use.

Your template needs to be as lightweight as possible,

I only use 1 background image for my template, thats my logo. I would rather have a fast site, than 1 with all the "extra's" and be slow.

[Nibiru]

Hi Kory27,

217 queries are alot! I think the culprit is that menu you are using. You need to change it or rewrite the code. That should fix your slowdown.
I was actually also interested in buying The Speedbooster. But haven't decided still.

There are alot of ways to speed up..
-Minify JavaScript
-Try to combine Javascripts
-Put Javascript on bottom if possible.
-Minify CSS
-Try to remove unused CSS.
-Try to combine CSS
-Optimize images ( a few template images still can be optimized, use PNGout )
-Using /index.php/ in URL could give your problems. (Using it will give you a worse SEO ranking). Check to see these value's are correct in Site --> Global Configuration --> Site -->
Use URL rewriting = Yes
Search Engine Friendly URLs = Yes
Adds Suffix to URL = No

and make sure the htaccess.txt is renamed to .htaccess in root.

Also add this in your htaccess:

Code Select Expand

#If available, set the expires to 'far future'
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/ico "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 day"
ExpiresByType text/plain "access plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType video/x-flv "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>

#Turn off ETags
FileETag none


There are plenty of other stuff your website can improve on.

Try using a Cloud if you haven't already. I'm using this one. http://www.cloudcache.com/

[Funky]

You should contact your hosting to allow you compression and also optimize the size and quality of your images. You will be amazed on the diference. Also use pingdom to test the speed of your site and you will get a report on witch query takes the most. If you have facebook and other social media try to test the site without them.
Cheers

[stinga]

Try turning off the cache, given the number of products you have, unless your cache is gimeganormus, you might end up spending more time swapping data in the cache than you save.
I got 4 seconds off our site (not running vm2 though)

[franzpeter]

If possible use google pagespeed server module and nginx. YSlow did change from bad 69 to good 83.