nquinn Posted July 5, 2014 Share Posted July 5, 2014 I've been on the hunt for an ecommerce solution, and while PrestaShop seems to answer most of my needs, I have one huge issue: it's friggin slooooow. I first installed a test build on my local machine (MAMP), and figured there were just some caching issues. However, when I went through the showcase on the web over dozens of sites, they are all painfully slow. Initial load times seem to range in the 3-5 second range. Product pages in the 2-3 second range. Compared to most sites, that seems like an eternity, with recommended load times < 1second. It's so bad that when I click on products and nothing happens, I often wonder if anything is being processed at all. Is this just the nature of PrestaShop? Going through Magento's showcase I didn't see a similar issue. (It wasn't lightning quick, but more on the order of 1 second or less). If you have a site that you think runs really fast, please let me know so I can check it out, but for now I am under the assumption that PS is a real dog, even for sites with just a few products. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 I think there are so many things that have to be taken into consideration that it makes the comparison difficult. One major thing that I can think of is that most people know Magento does not work on a shared server, but Prestashop does. In that, many people run their sites on shared servers. It does not provide the best performance, but it does run the shops for cheap. That being said, I optimize a whole lot of Prestashop sites for speed. There are so many factors to take into account in optimizing one, that you cannot just give a blanket answer to why they seem slow to you. Here are three that I have optimized that load in under 1 second. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/bg9ofS/makeupaddict.me http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/d8vRp7/www.space-shop.dk http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/c3ApKQ/zpalette.com The last one is part of the showcase too, so there are some fast sites in the showcase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centio Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 Indeed. Comparison is hard, but a few rules of thumb could go a long way in making Prestashop faster. -Disable and UNINSTALL any unneeded module. Makes a lot of difference -Do not use cheap hosting. Preferably run your own VPS. This way you can use APC caching -Use mediaservers. But do not use the same VPS -Under performance tab. Enable CCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 Another thing I meant to point out is that running a local webserver you are not going to get the same performance that you are running an online one. MAMP is just not tuned the way a normal webserver is, so you will notice a performance decrease using it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 6, 2014 Author Share Posted July 6, 2014 (edited) I think there are so many things that have to be taken into consideration that it makes the comparison difficult. One major thing that I can think of is that most people know Magento does not work on a shared server, but Prestashop does. In that, many people run their sites on shared servers. It does not provide the best performance, but it does run the shops for cheap. That being said, I optimize a whole lot of Prestashop sites for speed. There are so many factors to take into account in optimizing one, that you cannot just give a blanket answer to why they seem slow to you. Here are three that I have optimized that load in under 1 second. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/bg9ofS/makeupaddict.me http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/d8vRp7/www.space-shop.dk http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/c3ApKQ/zpalette.com The last one is part of the showcase too, so there are some fast sites in the showcase. The home page loads just BARELY under 1 second (.985 seconds for me), but the product pages are still slow. For example, I loaded this one: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/beeO62/http://makeupaddict.me/korres/12-cherry-lip-gloss-38-cinnamon-6ml-002oz.html And it came in at > 2 seconds. That's just ridiculous. Comparing that to a lightweight proprietary cart I built myself 10 years ago on shared hosting, I see 400ms. Edited July 6, 2014 by nquinn (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Patron Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 The home page loads just BARELY under 1 second (.985 seconds for me), but the product pages are still slow. For example, I loaded this one: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/beeO62/http://makeupaddict.me/korres/12-cherry-lip-gloss-38-cinnamon-6ml-002oz.html And it came in at > 2 seconds. That's just ridiculous. measuring page load time is very old school, while still important the 'true' measurement is decrease render time of 'above the fold'. What people see when they land on a page. in the page mentioned, moving render blocking JavaScript at bottom would 'significantly' help the 'above the fold'. that being said, the again mentioned page loaded very nicely, again use experience is more important than how long it took to load below the fold. here is some information that will help explain how we should be approaching page render, parts of this can be seen incorporated in native ps. http://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/prioritize-visible-content.html so if you want faster page loads, then one must buy/develop quality template that incorporates 'best practices' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centio Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 I got mine around 800-900ms. But to be honest. It's not under load at the moment. Physical memory is also low (512Mb) so probably not enough headroom for APC caching. Once live I will upgrade to 1GB and see how that goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 It is actually actively being worked on this morning, I have caching off on the site, so the performance is degraded. But at the same time, it is still faster than 70% of the sites on the internet. Prestashop is not light weight, it is feature packed, you are comparing two things that are not even close to each other. I can get great loading times on having a static php site that does not use a database, at the same time I have to give up features to have that. Everything is a trade off in the world of development. You cannot really even really compare two different sites because of the features one might use as compared to another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Patron Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 @dh42 I thought the page loaded rather well, I think I looked at this shop before and was impressed with it's responsiveness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 512 is not enough to run APC generally. To run APC you kind of have to know what you are doing to be honest, you have to run the right interpreter, make sure that your threads are living long enough, make sure your php memory limit is set correctly, and that you have a correct size cap on your threads being created. If you do not do that, you will crash your server periodically. When you run in fastcgi if you use the default process manager, 8 threads are the default. So if you have your memory limit set at 128mb and a 64mb APC shm, your machine will crash under load. You are needing 1.5 g or memory to just sustain the php processes on the machine, that is not even accounting for the kernel or for other processes such as mysql. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 @el patron, thanks, it is a project of mine I constantly tinker with. It kind of blows my mind, with all of the billions of web pages online someone wants to open a box, install Prestashop on a small server, then be one of the fastest sites on the internet. If that were the case all websites would load under 1 second and people would be vying for under 400ms. As this (year old) article states, the average loading time for the top 100 websites is more than 7 seconds, http://marketingland.com/retail-website-load-times-continue-to-decline-with-a-22-decrease-during-the-last-year-37604 I think Prestashop does really good as compared to other packages in the loading time, it can pull under 1 second out of the box. Wordpress cannot do that, Magento cannot do that, not many other packages can do that and none have the features that vPRestashop does. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centio Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 512 is not enough to run APC generally. To run APC you kind of have to know what you are doing to be honest, you have to run the right interpreter, make sure that your threads are living long enough, make sure your php memory limit is set correctly, and that you have a correct size cap on your threads being created. If you do not do that, you will crash your server periodically. When you run in fastcgi if you use the default process manager, 8 threads are the default. So if you have your memory limit set at 128mb and a 64mb APC shm, your machine will crash under load. You are needing 1.5 g or memory to just sustain the php processes on the machine, that is not even accounting for the kernel or for other processes such as mysql. Thanks DH42. I'll take a look into it, but from what it looks like I need a box with over 2GB of dedicated memory, at least according to your advice. No crashes so far, but then again no load as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 6, 2014 Share Posted July 6, 2014 No, you can get away with 1gb, just limit your workers to 4. Then you will only use around 750 mb of ram with your php and APC processes. You will have more than enough to run MYSQL and the system processes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 7, 2014 Author Share Posted July 7, 2014 It is actually actively being worked on this morning, I have caching off on the site, so the performance is degraded. But at the same time, it is still faster than 70% of the sites on the internet. Prestashop is not light weight, it is feature packed, you are comparing two things that are not even close to each other. I can get great loading times on having a static php site that does not use a database, at the same time I have to give up features to have that. Everything is a trade off in the world of development. You cannot really even really compare two different sites because of the features one might use as compared to another. I realize I can't compare the two fairly, but the load time still is an issue. I think what bothers me is not the total load time, but rather the fact that when you click on a product, there is huge lag/delay before anything is rendered at all. I don't think it's just a template thing either, because even the default bootstrap ones do it. Like, after clicking on a product, my browser sits in the "waiting for domain.com" state and then finally flickers over 2-3 seconds later. I wouldn't mind so much if it at least jumped soon and then content rolled in slowly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 I think there are two reasonable answers. Either get a server that can handle the load you are putting on it, or optimize your site to exert less of a load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centio Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 Did you apply any of the advice you have been given in this topic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaCos Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 I've been on the hunt for an ecommerce solution, and while PrestaShop seems to answer most of my needs, I have one huge issue: it's friggin slooooow. I first installed a test build on my local machine (MAMP), and figured there were just some caching issues. However, when I went through the showcase on the web over dozens of sites, they are all painfully slow. Initial load times seem to range in the 3-5 second range. Product pages in the 2-3 second range. Compared to most sites, that seems like an eternity, with recommended load times < 1second. It's so bad that when I click on products and nothing happens, I often wonder if anything is being processed at all. Is this just the nature of PrestaShop? Going through Magento's showcase I didn't see a similar issue. (It wasn't lightning quick, but more on the order of 1 second or less). If you have a site that you think runs really fast, please let me know so I can check it out, but for now I am under the assumption that PS is a real dog, even for sites with just a few products. The most important thing about speed is the server you host your PS store and what optimization you have configured on it.. After that there are several things that can boost speed down.. The most important that cross my mind would be caching mechanisms, reduce of html request, reduce of page size Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 @centio I have on a few of the sites listed. It varies by people budgets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Centio Posted July 7, 2014 Share Posted July 7, 2014 @centio I have on a few of the sites listed. It varies by people budgets. Lol Dh42. My comment was toward nquinn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Dalton Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 Try this one I'm working on, http://scrubscanada.ca/scpsmay14/en/med-couture-gold/33-med-couture-gold-riviera-top.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 8, 2014 Author Share Posted July 8, 2014 Did you apply any of the advice you have been given in this topic? I'm going to experiment with my local MAMP environment to see what I can do first. However, I'm still trying to find any sites with what I consider acceptable load times on the web. If I can't find an example, it seems fruitless to try to recreate it on my own (with less technical knowledge). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Dalton Posted July 8, 2014 Share Posted July 8, 2014 What is wrong with the example I posted? Hello? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 I think there are two reasonable answers. Either get a server that can handle the load you are putting on it, or optimize your site to exert less of a load. Hey Dh42, I saw this site in your portfolio, and it's lightning fast: http://www.whimsicalprintspaperandgifts.com/ Any idea why this particular one is so much faster than the others? Server? Less stuff? I'd be happy to go down the PrestaShop route if I can get these kinds of speeds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaCos Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Hey Dh42, I saw this site in your portfolio, and it's lightning fast: http://www.whimsicalprintspaperandgifts.com/ Any idea why this particular one is so much faster than the others? Server? Less stuff? I'd be happy to go down the PrestaShop route if I can get these kinds of speeds. This is not a PrestaShop store, its a hosted solution at bigcommerce.com . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) What would be the suggested server environment for a very small shop (12 products) with low traffic? (300-1000 unique visitors per month) I'm not worried about a heavy load of users, but rather just quick response when a user hits the site. For example, would a cheaper 512mb VPS host + a cheap CDN be better than a 1gb host? Edited July 10, 2014 by nquinn (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 @HaCos is right, it looks like they migrated off Prestashop. @nquinn I would do an a2 shared package with ssd drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nquinn Posted July 10, 2014 Author Share Posted July 10, 2014 (edited) @HaCos is right, it looks like they migrated off Prestashop. @nquinn I would do an a2 shared package with ssd drives. Dh42: Won't the shared hosts have issues with cpu/memory usage, though? It says 64gb for the entire server, but who knows how many sites that's spread across. Edited July 10, 2014 by nquinn (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dh42 Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 I actually think a2 will let you adjust it with a php.ini, I have a few clients that have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts