Hello thebigideasman,
I looked at your site and it is loading slowly for me too. I would recommend using the caching feature built into Concrete5.

From your Dashboard go to System & Settings, and under the Optimization section, choose Cache & Speed settings.

In the Cache & Speed settings menu, I recommend using at least basic cache.

Here is a link to a helpful article I wrote that goes over working with the cache and speed settings.
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/edu/concrete5/get-started/cach...

Also, you may want to have your host check the server logs for any additional issues / errors.

John-Paul

Thanks John-Paul, I only had that was different was, Full Page Caching set to "on - if blocks allowed" and have now set it to "Off" as your blog suggests. However it's only appears to have made minimal difference.

Can you think of anything else please?

Thanks

thebigideasman,

Optimizing your database may help, as it looks like the slow loading time is related to your database. I tested this by pulling up your login page, which is a single page by default, and confirmed it loads very quickly.

Also, if your host can provide you with a slow query log, or query data, it can list specific information regarding what your website is asking for and how long it is taking. Unfortunately, without access to your server I cannot provide specifics.

-John-Paul

I'm afraid that no amount of tweaking can make up for a server that's too busy. I put your site through a diagnostic website called 'www.unshit.com' (that's it's real name) and at the very end of the test, it tries to measure the server load by making some concurrent requests of your server that have nothing to do with your particular C5 website. They are just trying to test how busy the server is in general. I have attached the dismal results. Values less than 5 indicate a busy server. Your server rated 0.28 so your server is quite busy. (See attached screenshot). On overloaded servers, performance often improves considerably after midnight when traffic is lighter.

Just for comparison, concrete5.org measures between 7 and 15 depending on the time of day. My cheap hosting plan runs between 2-3 on this test during prime time and there are about 400 other sites on my shared host.

Thanks @mhawke I was afraid it might be something like that. I'm using 1and1.co.uk at the moment to host this site and should of guessed that such a broadly marketed hosting service would be over-subscribed.

Do you think complaining to them using your jpeg will make any difference, or will I just be wasting my breath?

Thanks anyway mate for going to this much trouble, I really appreciate the help from both you and John-Paul above.

I use 1&1 uk for a number of sites and have found that paying that little bit extra for their business package makes a big difference compared to the basic package.

However, there is always the random possibility that many other sites that share your server are unusually busy, so in that case getting your site onto a different shared server at the same 1&1 deal would make a difference.

Yes I concur with johnthefish on the possibility of asking 1&1 to move your site to a different server. I have had to do that on occassion and it helped. When hosts put sites onto servers, it must be very difficult to predict which sites will become popular and consequentially which servers will eventually become overloaded. A tech support request can't hurt.

Thanks @JohntheFish that's useful to know - I'm on 1and1Unlimited at the moment, so only one down from 1and1Business. I might try and see if that improves it, assuming they can't move my sites on to better servers.