Slow speed in prestashop 1.5

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Slow speed in prestashop 1.5

I have some clients that are using Prestashop as their E-commerce script. While I agree with most users out there that this is a great script, if you want to run it in a shared environment, this script is behaving like nothing I’ve seen, it has really slow speed in prestashop. And I’m referring to their latest version as of now, which is 1.5.2, compared the previous ones 1.4.x.

If you also look on their forum you will see a lot is being talked about this specific issue. Their performance tips involves removing the template check and enable caching.

However, the only problem where I’m seeing this as an issue is when you’re looking at the front site of your website, the backend is fast to not notice any details.

So what’s is the real issue here ?

It’s true that every new release comes with bugs that needs fixed and so on, however while they did increase the more functionality on their backend,  I believe they forgot to do anything to their main frontend site or that something is missing there.

In their documentation says we need to use caching to cache the queries the script makes, however, I have seen other E-Commerce stores behaving much better without any caching compared to the cached version of Prestahop.

Now it is true that I have not yet tested the script with APC or Memcached, but only with the normal File System cache option, since most shared hosting won’t even provide the two caching modules.

The only way to reduce the load time and increase speed for prestashop by a little is by setting:

  • Enable the cache option
  • Do not enable console

As for the caching modules, as I said, most shared hosting companies will not provide such option unless you consider a dedicated service like a VPS server or a Dedicated server.

So overall the new design in the backend is nice, working properly, no delaying and so on, however when we’re seeing the frontend, I’m pretty sure there are a number of users having this exact issue, slow website.

I guess having a SSD based hosting service will also increase performance a lot, but it will be more expensive.

 Click here for more detailed guide to speed up prestashop

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