Yeah, sleep it is an amazing fix all. I can really tell when I start getting to tired when I start to not spell things right and start mixing up my letters. I am pretty sure this is what was going on last night. Oh well.
As for Pingdom, I have used it for a while now. I feel it is pretty accurate. I just did a test a minute ago and I had a 6.3 second load time.
One thing I have just done was remove my background image. By removing the image and just having a color I have reduced almost 2 seconds off of my load time. I’ll have to look at my other images now. I noticed that my free shipping banner is 71K which is the biggest image on my page. This banner is an animated gif so maybe I’ll look at either changing formats or just not having it animated.
Do you know which format would be a smaller size, but still allow the animation?
Definitely, one of the biggest loads are my style sheets. I think combined they are something like 180 K. I really need to look and see how I can reduce this. It would be nice to get my total style sheets to below 100 K, but I don’t know if that is possible with CS-Cart.
I also took a look at your speed post a while back. What type of server are your running on? I asked my host about the settings you are talking about and he told me that if I did the same thing, I would probably crash my server.
I am using a VPS Cloud system with CyberLNC. Basically, for everything here, it is a base VPS system. I am sure that if I upgraded the server to the next level I would see a difference in load time and maybe even be able to do what you did, but unfortunately I don’t have it in my budget to upgrade quite yet. Maybe after some more sales I’ll do it.
Anyways, thank for the tips though,
Brandon
@ Brandon -
I think you will find that once the SmartOptimizer runs for a few days - it will cache more and more of the css etc. I don’t know why, but when I dump my own cache and start fresh, it seems to take a few days for everything to be re-cached, and reduce the load even farther. (Its one of those… don’t understand everything about it, but it works, so why try, …things)
As far as a host goes - I have been a fan of dedicated HostGator boxes for several years and have many dedicated boxes through them. They manage just about everything as far as updates etc, and I have heard many horror stories about them over the years… but they have never done wrong by me in the past 4-5 years. I have also used many others… so its really just a matter of preference and features.
The box itself is a dual core Xeon system with 4gigs of ram - Also - there will never be more than 20-25 sites on it, all from the same company - so its fairly easy to throttle resources to the sites that need it the most. (Hostgator.com/dedicated.shtml - Standard package)
In all - I have 14 dedicated boxes with different client sites on them, as well as several shared hosting plans I use for various SEO related things (separate accounts for traffic generation, articles, inlinks, etc) The hosting bills are all paid by clients, so the cost is passed on.
As far as image size and animation goes, its really hit and miss on finding the right balance of quality versus size - if you ever find it, please let me know also! 
Well I’ve been working on the speed. I’m still not sure about the smartoptimizer, but if it takes time than I’ll just have to wait and see.
Out of curiousity, how big will the cache grow to?
I have been messing around with my images and css. The site is loading faster now. According to Pindom I have the site down to 390.8 K and is loading at an average of 5.3 seconds. It also scores a B with Yslow, so I guess I am making progress.
Thank you for the tips.
Brandon
Im struggling with this so any help is appreciated.
Pasting this code at the beginning of my .htaccess file breaks the site.
In my case it has to be below the DirectoryIndex line, any idea why? This is my .htaccess before adding the optimizer code.
```php
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
RewriteEngine on
Some hostings require RewriteBase to be uncommented
Example:
Your store url is http://www.yourcompany.com/store/cart
So “RewriteBase” should be:
RewriteBase /store/cart
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^livingcontemporary.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.livingcontemporary.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !.(png|gif|ico|swf|jpe?g|js|css)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} ./catalog/.*
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index.html !-f
RewriteRule . index.php?sef_rewrite=1 [L,QSA]
```
Even then if its below the first line it breaks my SSL logo images. Anyway to enable this and not have it cache images? Or at least make exclusions?
I pasted the optimizer code after the CS-Cart code and it worked.
Funny thing is though, is that it doesn’t work on my localhost and only on my live site.
What do you mean by it breaks your SSL logo images? I use the Comodo image and it works fine.
I doubt this was any help, but I hope you figure it out.
Brandon
After a day or so of caching it no longer displays the SSL comodo image, its just an X. You can still mouse over it and it will still show the verified information but the image wont display with the optimizer turned on.
I assume its some sort of security thing and the optimizer is affecting it.
I had other SSL problems and I thought it was a result of the comodo code it’s self so what I did was change:
```php
Comodo SSL Certificate
To:
```php Comodo SSL Certificate
```
This is the part right before the tag.
I did some checking and by changing this back to http I get an error with the cache. I don't know if it matters if it is https, but it works for me.
I hope this helps,
Brandon
Thanks for the reply Brandon, Ive already had mine set to https for a while now. Not sure why its breaking. I do know that the primary reason you would want to set the link to https is because if it isnt then IE users will get an error that some of the information on the page isnt secure (and it will be that damn cot.gif image).
Ive been through that issue before…
Edit: On a side note Im going to move the icons out of my home directory and into the image directory like you have yours and see if that fixes the issue.
Edit2: Its working now, but I moved 1 of the 2 images to see if that was the issue and they both work, so I guess not. I just pasted the code at the end of the .htaccess like you and its running great.
I have to say this tip is amazing!!!
After installing smartoptimizer and also optimizing my database through the Cs-cart admin panel, my new web site is flying
I instaled “smartoptimizer”.
All is amazing.
But how to minify smarty result?
How to delete duplicating symbols [\r|\n|\t] in html?
Hello teksigns,
[quote name=‘teksigns’]i noticed that adding the gzip to the htaccess causes the my account page to break
if your already running the optimizer …[/quote]
There are some rendering troubles with gzip under Internet Explorer 6 & 7 with my website… Apparently, these browsers can’t handle gziped CSS…
You can test the rendering of your webpages under many browsers for Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD with these services:
[URL]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=8801[/URL]
Lee Li Pop
Lee Li Pop,
I am not seeing any problems in IE6 or IE7. I am using [url]http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage[/url] to test my pages.
David
Same here -
I use several systems at different locations, and several browsers to test - no display issues on my end on either the live or beta sites.
M
Hello David & NicheBuilder,
Thanks for advice. So, I’m bad
I will test again…
Hummm… Congratulations for this thread and your succeed implementation!
Lee Li Pop
Hello All,
Done and working!
BUT…
Please, check this directory:
smartoptimizer/[COLOR=“Blue”]cache[/COLOR]
And compare file size of your CSS.GZ Vs. your original CSS file.
My CSS.GZ file was bigger than my original CSS.
I fixed like this:
1 - Download your original CSS file (ie. style.css)
2 - Compress it to TAR.GZ (ie. styles.css.gz). You can do it with Windows freeware 7-zip
3 - Upload your new CSS.TAR.GZ file on your server (smartoptimizer/[COLOR=“Blue”]cache[/COLOR])
4 - Rename the original SmartOptimizer CSS.GZ file (ie. rename (example) “so_e94e15cd2e8f7d7a7t0f507nd9eafg04.css.gz” to (example) “so_e94e15cd2e8f7d7a7t0f507nd9eafg04-1.css.gz”
5 - Rename your new CSS.TAR.GZ file to the original SmartOptimizer CSS.GZ file (ie. rename “styles.css.gz” to (example) “so_e94e15cd2e8f7d7a7t0f507nd9eafg04.css.gz”
Test.
Now, my CSS.GZ is 3 time smaller than my original CSS, and 4 time smaller than the original CSS.GZ.
Lee Li Pop
Hello All,
[quote name=‘teksigns’]i tried it out on my site …
but if i do a gzip test at :
[url]http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php[/url]
it says the page is not compressed … not sure if it fully works or not …[/QUOTE]
Yes, me too, my CSS + JS CS-Cart scripts are compressed.
But, my HTML CS-Cart pages are NOT compressed…
While my Joomla + Vitrumart are fully compressed (HTML + CSS + JS) 
You can check out compression there:
[url]http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php[/url]
And there in “Page Objects > Type > HTML” table results:
[url]http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/[/url]
How are yours?
Lee Li Pop
Has anyone experience the Admin area slowing down after installing smartoptimizer? My web site is flying with smartoptimizer, but he Admin area has come to a crawl.
Anyway to remove the admin area from smartoptimizer?
David
[QUOTE]Has anyone experience the Admin area slowing down after installing smartoptimizer?[/QUOTE]
No Admin area slowdown experienced on our end.
You may want to try deleting the contents of cache folder within smartoptimizer & let it reload.
The admin is just fine for me too.
Brandon
It breaks the javascript on my homepage…