WP e-Commerce my site is slow, it’s your host folks!
My site is really slow what can I do?
I spend a lot of time talking to people who complain that their WP e-Commerce site is running awfully slow. They use plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. These are good plugins. People minify files. They use caching services like Cloudflare which is an excellent CDN (content distribution network), I use it on this site, but I am not selling anything.
All of these things can be a real problem on a e-Commerce site though. Serving up cached pages to your customers means the information can be old. Stock information could be inaccurate. Beyond that they do things such as combine several CSS files into one to save on server requests, they also do this with Javascript files. This sounds cool but in reality can break things very badly. This can also add enormous overhead which in fact has the effect of slowing an e-commerce site down even more! So what is the solution? It is quite simple but I find people just do not want to hear it.
Disclaimer:
I want to make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with any of the hosts, plugins or CDN’s mentioned in this article. In fact I had never even heard of Tsohost until Nick moved there. I removed the name of Nicks’s “dreadful” host as I do not want to hear from their lawyers!
I am not a hosting expert folks, do not ask me who you should use. Do some research, ask around. Contact me via my Contact page and I may have some private thoughts to share but they are in no way comprehensive
Get a new host!
If you start with an old Ford no matter what performance boosters you bolt onto it will never be a Ferrari. This is true for hosting too. If the server is slow you are doomed to run around in circles trying to wring every bit of speed out of it, but you will never truly succeed. Move, save yourself some pain. I had this conversation recently with a Storefront Themes customer Nick A. We mentioned the plugins but also pointed to the underlying hosting issue. His site was VERY slow. He decided to listen. I am posting that conversation here to illustrate my point.
Nick A
Hi – so I’m transferring my store over to wordpress using your elegance theme, and i’m very happy with the look of it, but it’s so slow it’s completely unusable. Is this a theme issue, or just the way wordpress stores are?
Wise Storefront user Dave Carlson
I had the same issue with a site a while back. If your site is hosted on “shared” hosting then most likely this is the cause of your slow down. As Mark noted the plugins we use on sites draw on memory. Most hosting companies cap your memory. I recently switched to a VPS hosting company where you can adjust your memory usage. The difference is unbelievable. Just thought I would throw my two cents in because I know I tried everything. I had gone through and configured cache plugins and such and those are not even necessary now.
Nick A
Thanks – it’s not so much the homepage that worries me, it’s the product pages. Have been trying wp super-cache which has been driving me nuts for a few days now (it’s great when it works, but seems very unreliable, and I keep getting ‘internal server errors etc), but I think I might take your advice and swap server.
I wish I’d gone a different route now and bought a shopping cart package, the open source thing is great, but if you’re not clever enough to code, like me, then not having a help-desk to call is a nightmare!
Could you recommend any hosts in particular?
Me
If you go VPS I have a couple of customers very happy with HostGator. They will move your site for you for free too.
Probably need to spend $40 a month though so you have cPanel to manage it.
Wise Storefront user Dave Carlson
I went with MyHosting for my VPS. With cpanel its about $28 per month. You do have to move your sites yourself but their support is very willing to help you out if you get stuck. I figured I would be better off spending the extra money on hosting rather than continuing to beat my head against a wall!
Nick A
Thanks guys – I was on xxxxxxx, who are dreadful, and have now moved to Tsohost in the UK who are amazing – the site is now lightning fast with no cacheing plugin, and they charge £5 ($8) per month!! They migrated the site for me, and the customer service is second to none. Could not recommend them highly enough
Conclusion
Check it out for yourself folks, Nick’s site was horribly slow, it was genuinely painful.
So there it is folks Nick did not even have to spend a bunch of money and move to a higher level of hosting. He skipped VPS servers etc and just found a good shared host for a very reasonable cost. His site is super fast now. Stop blaming the platform and the content folks. Find your Ferrari of hosting.
