Troubleshooting: Website Is Slow
NOTE: it's normal for some pages to take longer than others to load. Pages don't all load at the same speed. For example: the welcome page, lists of orders, and search results all typically take longer than other pages.
VERSIONS AFFECTED: all
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Pages appear to load slower than you are used to. Pages take more than three seconds to load.
SOLUTION
The solution depends on the problem. Check other websites besides yours. Are they slow too? If so, then your internet connection or something with your computer or network is at fault.
If other websites besides yours are not slow, then the problem may be: (1) your site has tons of data in it, or (2) there's an issue with the server your site resides on.
1) If your site has more than a few thousand orders in the system, certain pages will take longer than others to load (typically the welcome page, any page that has lists of orders, and search results pages). In version 4/2/11 and up, this can be mitigated. In the Site Settings the Recent Orders Highlighting should be set to 0 and the Show Total Orders in Menu should be set to no.
2) Your website is typically set up on what's known as a "shared server". Shared servers are inexpensive and generally work well. As the name implies, your website shares the server with other websites. Don't worry, none of the information on your website is accessible to any of these other websites. The vast majority of websites on the web reside on shared servers.
When lots of these other websites are getting heavy use, the result could be a server-wide slowdown as the server can only handle so much activity at any one time without slowing down. The server is continually monitored to ensure this doesn't happen so much that your website becomes unusable, but occasional slowdowns are a fact of life with shared servers.
However, you may find it happening more often than you'd like. The only solution here is to upgrade the hosting service to one where fewer other websites share the same server, or even one where your website is the only one on the server.
It costs an additional $30/month to upgrade to the next level up (fewer other websites on the same server and 10 gigabytes of disk space), with additional levels costing $50 and $70/month additional for even fewer shared resources (with 20 and 30 gigs of space). For a server all your own, the additional fee is $250/month (500 gigs of space).
These prices are in line with what you'd pay for a "virtual private server" or "dedicated server" from any third party hosting provider. As you can see, there's a strong financial incentive to keep your website on a regular shared server if possible.
You could try using the time savings calculator to see whether the cost of upgraded hosting would be worth it in your case.
For more information or if you have any questions please email info@valuedwebsites.com
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