PHP is really slow, can it be tweaked?
 

Hi,
I generated HTMl catalogs of my products today, and noticed how the html pages displayed about 400% faster than browsing the site in regular mode.

So is there anyway to tweak performance of PHP to speed up my site?

Are you on a dedicated box?

No, shared.

Also I just found out from my ISP that magic_quotes_gpc = off, and safe_mode = on. Is that the cause for my slow site?

I'm trying to get them to change it.

I don't think that'd make your site any slower. It might make your site break on apostrophes and in a few other places, but it wouldn't make it slower.

I'd ask them to install php-accelerator (http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk). It's a night and day difference, and it's free. Of course, they might tell you "no" for some reason.

As a last resort, you COULD always look for another host.

How many GB of traffic are you pullng through X-Cart? How many products do you have in the cart? How many visitors?

You know, X-Cart was NOT written for speed. I'm finding that out the hard way. We just had to drop in a new processor and more RAM into a dedicated server because one of our sites with 400+ products and 100,000 unique visitors / month (17.5 GB of traffic last month) was starting to slow the server down. The upgrades weren't necessary to keep the site running at this point, but it was starting to get pretty slow.

I hope this helps.

My site isn't even live yet.
So the only visitor at the moment is me. Hardly any bandwidth is used. I do have almost 1000 products though.

My host is a piece of s***, they won't even install php accelerator for me. I'm trying to cancel, but their avoiding it as best as they can. See I signed up for 2 years of hosting (stupid me), so they really dont wanna let me cancel.

Already shopping around for a faster host. Any suggestions or recommendations in that area?

Web Host
 

I am using IPowerweb hosting..no problems
ipowerweb.com

I have, thus far, been very impressed with www.site5.com's hosting. I've not tried an x-cart install on there, but my site and my control panel run quite nicely.

Regarding service providers. I have been very happy with a company called Superb.net - really great customer service. Check out their low cost dedicated servers at www.superbservers.net.

Philip

Safe Mode
 

Safe Mode should be set to off for all the features of X-Cart to work correctly. To speed X-Cart up disable "Fancy Categories" if you have that add-on. Turn off all features that aren't necessary to you (ie tracking of stats, best buys, other languages, etc.)

The html catalog is great for the search engines to crawl your pages but only from a link on your first page. Once a user selects any help menu item or adds to cart they are bounced out of the html pages never to return again.

I thought the same as you about the speed but after tweaking it found it runs fine. If traffic is heavy on the server or the internet itself you notice a slow down.

Try superwebhost.com, those guys ROCK. Tell 'em tycoonrae.com sent you, please!