Hi there!

I have been noticing my store is running slower than I'd like.

I've been monitoring it for awhile to make sure it's the store itself that is running slowly. Sometimes my satellite internet service causes my internet access to be slow, but when the satellite is slow, everything runs slow, not just the store. I'm convinced there's some issue with the store itself.

When I add an item to an order, it can take 10 to 20 seconds for the store to complete the activity. When I use the store Admin to modify or print orders, it can run so slowly that I start an action and find something else to do for a brief time. Browsing pages that do not require access to the database seem to display about as quickly as they always have.

The database is around 18-20 MB in size. I have downloaded the database, compacted and repaired it with my local installation of MS Access, and then uploaded it with no appreciable improvement.

The store is hosted on Servelink, and their service is typically reliable, but they're my next stop if my inquiry here doesn't bear fruit.

Any thoughts or suggestions? We're in our usual slight lull before the busy holiday season, so I thought I'd look into this now before things get too crazy.

--DeeAnnna

Classic Bells, Postville, Iowa, USA, http://classicbells.com/

Hi Deeana,

I'm based in North Manchester UK and initially loading the site took about 20 -25 seconds.

FYI going in to the store was almost instant, choosing an item, selecting the option's and adding to cart were equally very quick. The soft cart appeared quickly and when choosing checkout the time to move to the next screen was around 12 seconds. Returning to the cart was almost instant as was deleting the item from the cart. Using the search was very quick too. Google Page Speed Insights returned 99 for mobile and 97 for desktop.


Steve
Manchester, UK

Using ECT since 2004

Hi DeeAnna
Why not get serverlink in on this to give the site a once over? They are normally extremely helpful (which is one of the reasons we tend to recommend them )

Vince

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One concern I've had (and this doesn't relate to Servelink) is that I have over 800 products defined and around 7000+ orders in this database. How big can the database become and still function well?

On a related note, I've noticed a lot of duplicate data in the tables as I've explored the database over the years. I've always wondered about how much inefficiency that introduces, especially as the database size increases.

Classic Bells, Postville, Iowa, USA, http://classicbells.com/

Hi DeeAnna
It's always good to have the database as efficient as possible, but 800 products and 7000 orders is nothing for a database. I've done stress testing with a million products at times (though admittedly I wouldn't go that high unless you have a dedicated server. )

Vince

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Thanks. That's good to know.

The Servelink folks pointed me to a knowledgebase article that recommends doing manual compact and repair (this is done on a regular basis), monitoring for malicious/suspicious activity (the store activity log gets monitored and there's been nothing weird since last April), and converting to MS SQL Server (not sure how I feel about this, given the consensus from you and the Servelink article that says my database is way smaller than would justify this change.)

I guess I'll keep digging. --DeeAnna

Classic Bells, Postville, Iowa, USA, http://classicbells.com/

DeeAnna,

We moved our site from Access to MS SQL Server a while back, but our database is much, much larger than yours. I wouldn't think that upgrade is worthwhile for a long time with your database size.

That's the solution that the Servelink folks are recommending. The cost is a $75 one time fee -- pretty reasonable. Waiting around for an unpredictably slow-as-molasses website was costing me too much time and fraying my temper, so I decided to take them up on their offer. I'm not quite sure if they've made the switch -- I'm curious to see how it goes. --DeeAnna

Classic Bells, Postville, Iowa, USA, http://classicbells.com/