Slow Virtuemart 2 site. How to optimize

[randomdev]

Sometimes joomla components are running scripts etc in the time it takes to first byte.
E.g. An image display component might be creating thumbnails of images/checking if they are cached etc

[tampasounds]

Try JCH_Optimize
Many tools to unify js and css and images
Your google page speed / insights score will go up.

Hope this helps you

[jjk]

Your google page speed / insights score will go up.

Just in case you don't know - Google page speed doesn't measue loading times. My own site has a very low google page speed index, although the loading time is pretty fast. And I've seen websites, where i.e. a lot of gzip are being used, where the gzips actually slowed down the site significantly. So test it before doing everything that the dumb google tool suggests.

[ronjb]

just want some clarification, i don't think virtuemart is an ideal shoppingcart plugin if you have 20k products or even more,, or can anybody prove me wrong that virtuemart can load with an ideal speedload even if you have thousands of products..

i have tested 3 sites with same template and same settings, have jch optimize, jotcache, cleancache with diff version of virtuemart and joomla but it seems like that the issue is virtuemart can't really handle thousands of products causing it to load very very slowww..

you can try these sites for speed testing
http://www.circlebcshop.com.au/ - live actual website with VM version 2.0.22a | Joomla 2.5.16 | over 50k products | installed with JCH Optimize and  JotCache plugin
http://demo.circlebcshop.com.au/ - demo site with VM version  2.0.26a | Joomla 2.5.17 | over 50k products installed with System - jbetolo and JotCache plugins

http://demov2.circlebcshop.com.au/ - demov2 with VM version 2.0.22a | Joomla 2.5.16 | default virtuemart sample data |  installed with JCH Optimize and  JotCache plugin... this one loads fast compared to other two because it only has few products..

i really thing its due to virtuemart can't handle much products.. or please can anybody prove me wrong and post a site link with 20kproducts and is loading fast..

[jjk]

I've just looked at your 'fast' demo, which actually is very slow - using the Firefox browser plugin 'Firebug' in order to see some possible hickups of your site.
Here are a few hints:

1. The time until the first get request is completed usually is around 1.5 seconds or higher. Just for comparison - my own VM2 shop with approximately 600 products is running on a very cheap shared server with without any cache enabled and there the response time usually is around 0.5 seconds, which suggests your server is pretty slow.

2. You are loading a lot of javascript where one is blocking the next one from loading for more than 1 second. In other words, your slidehow, the caroussel, the slider for iphones, the prettyPhoto lightbox in addition to the VM lightbox, the superfish menu, loading of Google fonts, etc. all add up to long page loading times.

3. If possible, use the 'Firebug' plugin for the Firefox browser to locate problems on your website.

As a first step I would suggest to disable most of the 'funky stuff' in your template (did you ask the template provider if they tested it with the latest VirtueMart version? (I think they didn't). In your demo I also noticed a lot of links (eventually sample products provided with your template) which lead to 404 (don't exist) errors, which should be disabled or deleted.

The biggest VM shop I've seen was nearly 800000 products and 20000 are usually no problem.