Site is extremely slow with solarsentinel
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- ketkoota
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 70
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We just launched our new site with SolarSentinel. We have a lot of users. We upgraded our hosting 3 times now, and are having serious issues with load and cpu usage from the homepage. Does anyone have any ideas on how we can optimize and improve the site load? We are already using rokGZipper.
Thanks!
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- prim
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17290
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A link to your site would be helpful
- Please reply with a direct link to the issue & create a new thread for each new issue.
A template is only as good as the content that goes into it
- DanG
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- prim
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17290
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Ok thanks, to be honest i think it is the plug-ins that is causing the slow-down. Too many scripts will slow any site down. If anyone else has more ideas how to help i'm all ears
I've tried your site a few times with different browsers and sometimes the site loads in a few seconds and sometimes in 10-15 seconds so i'm not sure if this is a combined scripts/hosting issue but Servint should be an ok provider afaik... - Please reply with a direct link to the issue & create a new thread for each new issue.
A template is only as good as the content that goes into it - DanG
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- ketkoota
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 70
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OK, I guess I understand now why so many of the elements in the template were hand coded. For instance, the typical frontpage component was recoded by rockettheme to use rokcandy to format hand added articles. I replaced that with a module called "featured items." I replaced the Videos and Images sections with an imagery gallery rotator and video gallery lister module, respectively.
I remember being very annoyed that the template did not attempt to pull in the articles dynamically. There is no way the editors for my site would be able to hand add each article during the day to the list of articles on the homepage. There is no way they would be able to create the links for those articles, images and videos on their own. Not only are they just not saavy enough, but they expect the site to do that kind of thing for them. At a bare minimum, they expect a button to click to add the items, not some "weird" code to fill out and update manually.
Anyhow, it looks like no one has come up with a solution to this problem. It seems to me that the only way to have a page like this be efficient is to bundle the SQL calls into fewer requests. For instance, all of the rockettheme modules make a single request to the server instead of individual ones. Has anyone done that kind of thing? Is there a joomla component that would do it?
Thanks!
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- prim
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17290
- Thanks: 217
- I don't think it is possible to make less SQL requests as the template is pretty optimized already.
- Please reply with a direct link to the issue & create a new thread for each new issue.
A template is only as good as the content that goes into it - DanG
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- johnsburg
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 74
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We are also using Solar Sentinel and experiencing some slowness
66.99.49.46
I have read about the RokZipper extention and wondering if that would help. Also some details on how to install it and configure php to utilize this Gzip would assist.
Any ideas to speed this up would be greatly apprecitated
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- ketkoota
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 70
- Thanks: 0
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I have rokzipper installed, although hadnt thought to do anything else to configure it. I'd be interested in any feedback here as well.
I went on the Joomla! site's Performance forum and saw there was a post about SolarSentinel performance there as well. If I recall correctly, at least one person found that disabling RokWeather made a significant improvement.........
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- ketkoota
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 70
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I just checked the solarsentinel template (straight from the demo.rockettheme.com) with websiteoptimization.com's page analyzer.
analyze.websiteoptimization.com
url: demo.rockettheme.com/may09/
The results were not good.
* TOTAL_HTML - Congratulations, the total number of HTML files on this page (including the main HTML file) is 1 which most browsers can multithread. Minimizing HTTP requests is key for web site optimization. Y
* TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 393 which by their number will dominate web page delay. Consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Above 20 objects per page the overhead from dealing with the actual objects (description time and wait time) accounts for more than 80% of whole page latency. See Figure II-3: Relative distribution of latency components showing that object overhead dominates web page latency in Website Optimization Secrets for more details on how object overhead dominates web page latency. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests. Consider using CSS sprites to help consolidate decorative images. Using CSS techniques such as colored backgrounds, borders, or spacing instead of graphic techniques can reduce HTTP requests. Replace graphic text headers with CSS text headers to further reduce HTTP requests. Finally, consider optimizing parallel downloads by using different hostnames or a CDN to reduce object overhead.
* TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 376 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Recommend combining, replacing, and optimizing your graphics. Replace graphic rollover menus with CSS rollover menus to speed display and minimize HTTP requests. Consider using CSS sprites to help consolidate decorative images. Use CSS techniques such as colored backgrounds, borders, or spacing instead of graphic techniques to reduce HTTP requests. Replace graphic text headers with CSS text headers to further reduce HTTP requests. Finally, consider optimizing parallel downloads by using different hostnames to reduce object overhead.
* TOTAL_CSS - Warning! The total number of external CSS files on this page is 13 , consider reducing this to one or two external files. Combine, refine, and optimize your external CSS files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed CSS for high-traffic pages) on your pages. You can optimize CSS files using shorthand properties, grouping, and then minify and GZIP compress them to reduce their footprint. Remember to place CSS files in the HEAD and JavaScript files at the end of the BODY to enable progressive display.
* TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 1226755 bytes, which will load in 323.09 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 100K to achieve sub 20 second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider optimizing your site with Website Optimization Secrets, Speed Up Your Site or contacting us about our optimization services.
* TOTAL_SCRIPT - Caution. The total number of external script files on this page is 3 , consider reducing this to one or two. Combine, refactor, and minify to optimize your JavaScript files. Ideally you should have one (or even embed scripts for high-traffic pages) on your pages. Consider suturing JavaScript files together at the server to minimize HTTP requests. Placing external JavaScript files at the bottom of your BODY, and CSS files in the HEAD enables progressive display in XHTML web pages.
* HTML_SIZE - Caution. The total size of this HTML file is 73072 bytes, which is above 50K but below 100K. With 50K of images and multimedia this means that your page will load in about 20 seconds. Consider optimizing your HTML and eliminating unnecessary features. To give your users feedback, consider layering your page or using positioning to display useful content within the first two seconds.
* IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 1022059 bytes, which is over 100K. Consider switch graphic formats to achive smaller file sizes (from JPEG to PNG for example). Finally, substitute CSS techniques for graphics techniques to create colored borders, backgrounds, and spacing.
* SCRIPT_SIZE - Warning! The total size of external your scripts is 83213 bytes, which is over 20K. Consider optimizing your JavaScript for size, combining them, and using HTTP compression where appropriate for any scripts placed in the HEAD of your documents. You can substitute CSS menus for JavaScript-based menus to minimize or even eliminate the use of JavaScript.
* CSS_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your external CSS is 48411 bytes, which is over 20K. Consider optimizing your CSS for size by eliminating whitespace, using shorthand notation, and combining multiple CSS files where appropriate. By using labeled container cells and descendant selectors you can target chunks of HTML content efficiently without the need to embed extra classes and styles.
* MULTIM_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of all your external multimedia files is 0 bytes, which is less than 10K.
I ran this on my own solarsentinel site with similar results. I am really surprised at the sheer number of images being used. Granted, I am not targeting a 56k modem, and possibly some of these standards are pretty strict, but this certainly explains why we are having such load issues. With 8000 unique vistors a day and almost 400 images every time the homepage loads, this would put some real strain on the server.
I chose solarsentinel because it LOOKS very professional, and I understand that having lots of images is part of that and I was willing to make that trade-off, but it seems that rockettheme could have anticipated that this might cause issues and converted at least some of these images into sprites.
So where do I go from here, any ideas folks?
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- dalimian
- Newbie
- Posts: 4
- Thanks: 0
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my site is extremely slow as well:
www.hotnewpop.com
. The joomlaperformance.com reported my site failed miserably on every metric. The stats were 10 times slower and other average sites. If this cannot be optimized I dont recommend anyone using solarsentinel.
First thing I notice is the number of images downloaded is more than what is actually used. All possible backgrounds and styes are downloaded as shown with joomlaperformance.com
Type, Number, Size(bytes), Time (secs)
HTML 1 55991 44.979118
Images 320 500306 26.155535
Css 16 151747 1.646839
Scripts 14 179169 1.630703
Type, Your Value, Recomnded Value, Grade
HTML Size 55kb 40kb Warning
Total Size 866kb 100kb Fail
Total Requests 351 30 Fail
Generation Time 3.060512 1 second Fail
Number Of Hosts 4 2 Warning
Number Of Images 320 25 Fail
Size Of Images 489kb 20kb Fail
Number Of CSS Files 16 2 Fail
Size Of CSS Files 148kb 10kb Fail
Number Of Script Files 14 2 Fail
Size Of Script Files 175kb 10kb Fail
HTML Encoding Gzip Fail
Valid Html Errors Valid Fail
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Time to create page: 0.061 seconds