Magento 1.9 extremely slow, time outs and cache issues

[jimbobber]

Hi all!

My Magento site is very very slow (takes around half a minute to load a page) and times out a lot.

I also have an issue where the var/cache fills up really quickly and this in turn causes the site to no t load at all.

If I manually empty all the cache the site works again.

Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?

Thanks you

[JLHC]

There are lots of possible reasons that can cause slowness.

What type of hosting service are you using? Is it optimized for Magento and is it powerful enough to run your store?

How many products or SKUs do you have and your concurrent traffic? Is your hosting service powerful enough to handle them?

Do you have third-party extensions in your store?It's possible that one or more of them may be causing the slowness.

When did the slowness started? What did you do immediately before that happened?

[jimbobber]

Hi there, the hosting is a linux platform, it is shared hosting but it is the highest option that Fasthosts do without going for a dedicated server.

The store only has 50 products, maybe a little less.

I will try disabling 3rd part modules tomorrow, the only one I have that loads with the site is a testimonials plug in that uses javascript to scroll reviews, apart from that the site is very light on mods.

The slowness started a few months ago, nothing was changed directly before it.

I have tried merging the CSS and Java and using zend - but I constantly get 504 time outs or a very slow site

I am at a loss really!

[JLHC]

50 products doesn't sound much at all. Did you receive a huge boost in traffic when the slowdown started happening?

Another thing to check is your theme. See if you have many third-party resources loaded which can slow things down (but I highly doubt that it'll result in loading speed of 30 seconds!).

I suspect that this may be related to your server. You may want to try loading your website from a different hosting provider (who's optimized for Magento) and see if you face the same slowness. Many hosting providers provide money back guarantee so you can use that as a trial to test out their service and if you are unhappy, cancel and get your refund.

[jimbobber]

Hi there, no, no sudden boost in traffic or anything like that.

The store and template came from rocket theme:

http://www.rockettheme.com/magento/themes/metropolis

Their stuff has always been good to me, they are a good company.

I will get onto the hosts tomorrow, all I am getting now is 504 time outs

[JLHC]

It does sound like a server related problem to me. Hope you will be able to work with them to get this resolved.

In the meantime I'll recommend that you try loading a copy of your website in another hosting provider's server to see if it is slow as well. Based on the information you provided so far, it shouldn't and that should confirm the server issue.

[jimbobber]

OK, so I have done more digging and it seems I have literally thousands of files in my var/report folder.

I am backing up the whole site now and then going to delete those, the web host say we are out of storage space, and I think these files are why.

Anything I need to look for here in the files?

I'd like to fix the cause rather than just plug the hole

[JLHC]

Every file in car/report should be related to an error that happened to your website.

Try opening a few of them and see if they have the same error messages or whether they are all different.

Once you know what are the errors, you will be able to find solutions for them.

[jimbobber]

Hi, I have looked at a few in Wordpad.

There are a variety of things, too many connections comes up a lot.

Is there a way I could PM you a log file?

The web hosts are trying to put the onus on me to fix it, I am OK with that but feel a bit frustrated as the site did work before we upgraded the hosting package.

I am at a bit of a loss now!

[JLHC]

Well if you see errors like too many connections, it may be related to the server after all. 

If you don't mind it'll be better if you can post the logs here (with your details redacted) so that others can also learn from your problems in case they face the same errors in the future.