Storefront Ideas: Magento ® Tips by GoMage

The first thing you need to understand is the more complex the system (product, site, etc.), the more demanding the system is to the resources (in other words, to the hardware).

The same is with the data. The more data that is being processed by the system, the more demanding system to the resources. We will try to clarify a bit.

The simplest site will work with different speed depending on the number of records in the database (the more records, the slower the system).

So, Magento ® is a very complex system with thousands of data and it is a very intense system to the associated resources.

So, how to improve the performance of such a requiring system!?

The configuration of Magento ® Storefront Ideas

1. 1. You should enable all the variants of the caching: Admin → System → Cache Management. If you have Magento ® Enterprise Edition, please, don’t forget to enable « Full Page Caching».
2. Combine all JS and CSS files: Admin → System → Configurations → Developer; enable «Merge JavaScript Files» in the section «JavaScript Settings» and enable «Merge CSS Files» in the section «CSS Settings» include «Merge CSS Files».
3. If the products quantity is more than a thousand, we advise you to enable Flat Tables Admin → System → Configurations → Catalog in the section «Frontend» and allow the options «Use Flat Catalog Category» and «Use Flat Catalog Product». It will make the front end faster, but it will add some work to the re-index option.
4. If your store is not in the test mode, you should disable the system log files, because it will release a big part of the resources: Admin – System – Configurations – Developer in the section «Log Settings». The option «Enabled» is responsible for it. You can make the entire catalog faster by disabling the use of Layered Navigation, but we don’t advise doing that. Even more, you should improve your Layered Navigation with the additional extension, for example, GoMage Advanced Navigation with one which will help you to increase your sales.
5. The huge size of the database makes the work process slower. So, we advise you to remove the products attributes which are not used. Sometimes, import/export can fail during the work process and in this case, the temporary data is left in the tables dataflow_batch_export and dataflow_batch_import respectively. Also, the log files tables or the tables with the debug information can be crammed full if you have forgotten to disable them. If you need to find what tables are the biggest ones, you should use the following SQL request:
   1. SELECT table_name article_attachment, engine,
   2. ROUND(data_length/1024/1024,2) total_size_mb,
   3. ROUND(index_length/1024/1024,2) total_index_size_mb, table_rows
   4. FROM information_schema.tables
   5. WHERE table_schema = ‘magento’
   6. ORDER BY 3 desc limit 20;

   But if you are not familiar with log files, you can use the following request:

   1. truncate table dataflow_batch_export;
   2. truncate table dataflow_batch_import;
   3. truncate log_customer;
   4. truncate log_quote;
   5. truncate log_summary;
   6. truncate log_url;
   7. truncate log_url_info;
   8. truncate log_visitor;
   9. truncate log_visitor_info;
   10. truncate log_visitor_online;

It helps to release the database in the majority of cases. If you have any customizations, we advise that you check the frontend with the enabled profiler in order to check the subject of the complex (narrow) areas, paying attention to the request quantities of these or those methods, memory consumption and so on.

Hardware improvements:

1. Use the dedicated server;
2. Use the additional server for the database (one server is for the site, another one is for the database);
3. Don’t save the session in the file system, but use Memcached;
4. If you often use the admin panel, there is the use to separate the backend and the frontend on the different servers;
5. It seems to be better to buy the necessary quantity of servers, have your own system administrator instead of hiring the host provider.