Slow, Slow SLOWWWWWWW! Why?

[ukbaz]

Just running a test of 1.5.6 on a dedicated server - never had such a slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww site.

 

Compared with 1.4 Prestashop this is totally stupid.

 

Current site load (1.4.9) - The web page took 4.02 s to load, used 190 requests, and weighed in at 823.6 kB
Test Site load (1.5.6.2) - The web page took 14.80 s to load, used 76 requests, and weighed in at 568.3 kB

 

That's a whole ten seconds extra for a smaller page size!

 

Who the hell is going to wait 14 secinds for a page to actually load?

 

This is NOT shared hosting , but on a dedicated Dual Quad Core Xeon E5420 with 8GB RAM

 

How come it's so ridiculously slow? Anyone else had these problems or found a fix? 

 

 

All these problems with 1.5 and we're off on 1.6 beta already! Would it not make more sense for Prestashop to iron out the kinks in one version before dashing out a new version entirely? Now, in a short while we'll have 2 versions neither of which is bug free. 

 

 

[Dh42]

With both of those times I would assume that the server is set up incorrectly, those times are generally too long. Do you have a link to the sites? 

[ukbaz]

http://thermometer.co.uk

 

http://thermometer.co.uk/testpshop

 

You'll see the difference in loading immediately.

 

Don't think it's a server issue as never had any issues with the main site.

 

Thanks

[Dh42]

The main site is not running like it should be either. It is taking too long to load with a dedicated server as well. 

 

 

Something like this would take a lot of information to look into. What version of php is the server running? memory limit? how much traffic is the site getting? Things like that. 

[prestashopninja]

In addition to what Dh42 had to say,  to turn debug profiling on would also give a good idea. Also, of course you already did that, but sometimes we do forget to check twice if the cache is working in a sane manner.

[indus]

Let me guess , you have the last option in performance : Cache (APC, Memcached or whichever ) turned on.

[J.Sahu]

Your website site us slower than the testshop site when I've tested. A website will not take such time if you have configured everything correctly. In addition you have to do something Please have a look here https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthermometer.co.uk%2Ftestpshop%2F&tab=desktop

Edited February 18, 2014 by J.Sahu (see edit history)

[ukbaz]

Have attached php ini info and server configuration - as below site traffic not excessive. Obviously php and SQL settings same as for current site, so extra overhead must be to do with the version, not the server, surely? 1.5.6.2 seems to add to server respnse time way too much - anyone have a clue why this is?

 

Server information

Server information: Linux #1 SMP Tue Apr 17 17:08:00 EDT 2012 x86_64

Server software version: Apache

PHP version: 5.3.10

Memory limit: 128M

Max execution time: 20000

Database information

MySQL version: 5.5.23-cll

MySQL engine: MyISAM

Tables prefix: ps_

Store information

PrestaShop version: 1.5.6.2

Shop URL: https://thermometer.co.uk/testpshop/

Current theme in use: simpleresponsivetheme

Mail configuration

Mail method: You are using the PHP mail function.

[ukbaz]

Attached php.ini file

php_ini.txt

[indus]

I will repeat in case you did not read my post, what is your options under performance tab in the back office.

[selectshop.at]

@ Ukbaz - Prestashop 1.5. is bigger than PS 1.4.(database about 2X more tables), FTP several new tools in comparision to PS 1.4. Memory_limit with 128 is sub-optimal and really minimum.

 

Do you have any accelerators installed on your server ? mem-cache, Xcache, etc ? If yes activate caching on your back-office.

 

Another bigger problem you are having is First time to byte. The first request do find your domain/page is too slow:

 

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140218_5R_HPP/

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140218_5R_HPP/1/performance_optimization/#first_byte_time

 

Optimize your pictures, if possible. Pictures bigger tha 800X800 px are not good for loading time.

 

Are you hosting in UK ?

[prestashopninja]

What about debug profiling? It will most probably reveal some module consuming excessive resources.

The content (blog) pages are reasonably fast while the product and categories pages are deadly slow.

Debug profiling is the key.

[ukbaz]

Ok I'll try and answer all at once - 

 

Smarty cache on - never recompile - do not open console

 

CCC for CSS On

CCC Javascript On

HTML minified

Compress inline Javascript

Apache optimisation - on

 

File System caching on

 

Memcache PECL extension installed

 

Having APC installed to try that

 

Hosting in UK

 

I do have another 1.5.4 site on same server that loads much faster and much faster TTFB! So seems only to be this 1.5.6.2 one that's got issues!

[indus]

Turn off File system caching. I think the reason your 1.4 store is slow is probably you have File system caching enabled there also. 1.4 is fast enough without it.

 

Dont know about memcached, it does not work for me, as far as APC is concerned, you can install it but keep monitoring the status, my CPU spiked to 100 percent and server died due to it. Now i have installed APC but have not enabled it in the back office, it will still cache the system files. Enabling it in the back office will enable user cache also and that creates problems for me. Whether you enable APC or not from the back office, it will still cache the php system files.

 

Final words in my experience, the cache system is broken in prestashop, and i can guarantee you the File system option is plain horrible.

 

Here is the bug report which is still open.

 

http://forge.prestashop.com/browse/PSCFV-5225

Edited February 18, 2014 by indus (see edit history)

[instinct]

I used to have the same problem with memcache and APC installed.. afterning turning both off, the site loads much faster.

 

Have a go at it and see how it performs..

[Dh42]

@instinct

 

More than likely you had them configured incorrectly. Memcache is not really needed unless you are running a server array. Opcode caches are pretty awesome though. 

[instinct]

@Dh42 Yeah maybe, I was following a guide found on the net about setting up APC for prestashop. I might've done something wrong along yhe steps, or it was a dodgy guide lol...

[ukbaz]

Hi DH42

 

I've installed and enabled APC cache now with 256mb of memory, and turned off all Prestashop stats modules  - it's still slow!

 

I've noticed a lot of other comments/posts o here saying much the same!

 

Link to main site is http://thermometer.co.uk - this seems much faster tan the test site running 1.5 which is at:

 

http://thermometer.co.uk/testpshop

 

Thanks

[Dh42]

Turn on debug profiling and let me see the output. Speeding up an application is an art, it is more difficult and has more variables to it than I can just write out in a post. 

[kbazo]

I have several clients with prestashop . One of them, www.mundocerrajero.com , started with prestashop 1.3. In version 1.4 had products with over 1200 combinations and worked brilliantly . From version 1.5 all have been problems. The current version is 1.5.6.2 . First. The database does not bear this number of combinations . Performance tests were conducted in local server , and php settings were adjusted with high standards .

 

This did not improve the problem of combinations. Access in the backoffice to products with more than 1000 combinations was not possible, either using the StoreManager .

 

We reduced combinations separating products and attributes to avoid more than 300 combinations. From there we could work, but based on reducing the customer options used. Anyway, the charging failure is constant and even now frontoffice works well in many cases to work at the back office is difficult due to the slowness of the system high. In other cases impossible.

Next week we will change the system server.

 

It may work better, but the multitude of complaints that I have read show that this is not a minor problem. The minimum requirements are not listed on the website of Prestashop, and updates are not worth anything at all if the requirements have been multiplied by three. Complaints about the combinations are constant and the only solution I see on the board is buying a plugin. Which has manufactured this plugin is aware that there is a limitation, so it appears in each of the pages where we talk about this problem.

 

The reality is that currently Prestashop is not light and the current version has more and more problems to work on a shared server, even on a dedicated server, if we require a little more.

Years ago to work with Prestashop and think it's a good product. However, since version 1.5 is another product. Stores that worked before version 1.5 modules and now require substantial improvements in equipment. I understand that it is prepared for larger companies, but is ignoring the medium shops, forcing the client to make decisions that were not taken on each previous update.

[ZiZuu]

We can confirm ..

 

Passed months working on caches (APC, FS, mod_cache, memcached, etc ..) Every PS cache backend is used the result is a huge CPU utilization in the back office (at least) .. We experimented a number of strange behaviors too, many users being logged with other's users data, having theyr carts filled with others' items and so on ..

 

We are now trying to re-enable mod_cache (without PS cache) as it is the only one being able to reduce by 4 or 5 times the loading times ...

 

 

PS guys should seriously take into account PS caching issues, as an e-commerce platform can't be so slow to make customers go away...

[benjamin utterback]

We can confirm ..

 

Passed months working on caches (APC, FS, mod_cache, memcached, etc ..) Every PS cache backend is used the result is a huge CPU utilization in the back office (at least) .. We experimented a number of strange behaviors too, many users being logged with other's users data, having theyr carts filled with others' items and so on ..

 

We are now trying to re-enable mod_cache (without PS cache) as it is the only one being able to reduce by 4 or 5 times the loading times ...

 

 

PS guys should seriously take into account PS caching issues, as an e-commerce platform can't be so slow to make customers go away...

 

Hi ZiZuu, thank you for your feedback. Can you tell me more about your findings, what versions were they? We know that we need to improve the caching systems and I'm sure your research and feedback will prove valuable. 

[ZiZuu]

We are using both PS and module at latest version ..

 

We definitively decided that PS caching (Cache.php and its implementations) is buggy, so we disabled this mechanism yesterday and now BO performances are ok (with any cache enabled it was sloooow and CPU consuming) ..

 

We have now both PS Cache (not smarty, not APC opcode) and apache's mod_cache disabled for a few days in order to assure there are no problems at all .. we plan to re-activate mod_cache (mod_disk_cache) in a few days to double check if the issues was caused only by the buggy PS cache or, as we think, enabling a server side transparent caching mechanism will require the application to know what page has not to be cached .. and payments, orders, BO, carts are all places were caching can be a nightmare .. in this case those pages should send proper cache headers to avoid caching at all