Site load speed

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As I'm in-process building my site, I've been having friends view it and give me feedback, and the thing that people keep saying over and over, and that I keep noticing and even getting almost fed-up with myself, is the really long load time.

One friend suggested it might be the web hosting service I use, but I have a sort of place-holder page I put together while I'm building this one, and it loads speedy quick, so I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.

I know in Sitewide Settings, there's a Speed Settings panel related to Caching, and I attached a screenshot of what my settings are right now. ;P I also included below a link to the concrete5 site I'm working on, as well as my place holder site, so you can see the difference in load times I'm talking about.

I'm a complete novice to all of this, and I'm literally teaching myself from the ground up, so I have no idea about any of this. Is the load time thing a common problem w/ c5, or am I doing something wrong, or is there something I can do to fix this? Any help or advice or anything at all would be super appreciated! Thanks so much, and I hope you're all having a lovely weekend! =)

http://www.amillionstatues.com/portfolio/index.php... c5 site
http://www.amillionstatues.com place holder site

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kasmores
 
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Hi,
Just from a quick at your source code, it seems your pulling files from the wrong place.

for instance, your style sheet path is:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="/portfolio/index.php/tools/css/themes/eye/general_styles.css" />

where as one of mine is:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/themes/Pink/mandy.css" />

How did you install your theme?

The theme should live at top level in the 'themes directory'

It should not be in the tools directory.

for starters, go to dashboard > Sitewide Settings> Linking and Enable Pretty URL's.

Don't take any notice of "Required Code
You must copy the lines of code below and place them in your server's configuration file or .htaccess file."

The .htaccess file should update itself.

This will remove the 'index.php/' part from your url's.

For a pretty simple web site it should load in a second or two.

Most paths to files seem wrong to me and there is a lot of unused code being pulled in.

Enable pretty URL's and try loading the theme in top theme directory.


Hope this helps.

Steev
kasmores replied on at Permalink Reply
kasmores
Hey Steve!

Wow, that's wacky... So, how I installed c5 in the first place was with SimpleScripts, and I installed my theme through the More Themes section of Add Functionality section of the Dashboard. I went through everything in my server's FileManager, and couldn't find anything that looked remotely like what I was looking for, and I'm not entirely sure where else to look/how else to move things around... =\

As for the pretty URLs, I had those previously enabled, and when I did, whenever I'd click on the link to a sub-page when I was signed out of my account, a blank page would load with the message, "No input file specified." As soon as I turned pretty URLs off that first go-round, everything worked again. And the same thing happened this time around, even though it told me my .htaccess file was updated. =(

Oy, I'm getting that sinking feeling that something may just have gotten seriously wonked w/ my install? =\

~Kate
Steevb replied on at Permalink Best Answer Reply
Steevb
OK,

My mistake, the path through tools is possibly right with your way of installing.

I have never done it that way before.

I've learnt over the years that pre-packaged stuff is usually a bad thing!

Themes and scripts can be bloated.

I replicated your install but did not have quite the same amount of errors and load time was as expected.


Try a clean 'one click install' and at the concrete config page, uncheck 'install sample content'.

Go to the Concrete5 website find your 'eye' theme, download it to your computer. If you can upload it through ftp, put it in the themes folder (zipped), then extract.

Go to control panel and try activating the theme from the themes section. It might help with cleaning up bits.

Hope this makes sense.

Steev.
kasmores replied on at Permalink Reply
kasmores
Ok!

So! Yay! Indeed, it did all make sense, and as a test, I did the created a new subdomain and did the 'one click install', and it went swimmingly, and uploaded the theme through ftp, and activated it and everything and put a little random content in, and fantastico! It loads at a normal site speed! Yippee! =D The only thing that still won't seem to work are the pretty URLs...

Alright, so my very last question, just to make sure, is this: does this basically mean I'm going to need to uninstall c5 from my current site, and then reinstall it + the theme clean? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's what it means, which sucks, but isn't the worst thing in the world if that's what needs to be done. Also, if that *is* what needs to be done, I have a paid add-on associated w/ this site; I won't have to repurchase that, right? I'd just release it from the project and then reassign it after the reinstall?

Thank you so so so so so so SOOOO much for all your help and patience! I really really super appreciate it. =D
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Hi,

Glad the test worked. Don't worry about pretty URLs.
Depends if the .htaccess file was written and where its hiding.

As for a re-install, from my perspective it depends on whether C5, the theme or add-on is misbehaving.

If I get a hiccup I normally strip out the easy bits first then kick out C5 as a last resort.

Paid add-on should already be associated with your domain and shouldn't matter, portfolio is just sub folder?

Hope that helps.
kasmores replied on at Permalink Reply
kasmores
It definitely does! Thanks so much for all your help! Steev, you are an absolute peach. ^_^

~Kate