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Excessive Bandwith being used


zefeena

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Hi,

 

I have a new website with 64GB bandwidth.  Today I have looked I have used half! 

 

I recently moved my website hosting, got the new mobile friendly site and SSL, and changed my domain name.

 

The combination of the above as reduced my visitors and sales dramatically, and yet i'm using more bandwidth than ever before.

 

My bandwidth usage was normally directly related to the amount of sales I had, so i'm thinking its something else that's sucking up all the bandwidth.

 

I have contacted my host, and awaiting a reply.

 

I noticed on the 'latest visitors' on my cpanel numerous items seeming to be very active:

 

The one below for example - the dress code is the theme, and i'm pretty sure there is no reason for this to be showing.

 

(at the same time the 'whos online' showed  this ip , in the same place about 30 times, so I have blocked it - hopefully it wasn't a customer!!   104.255.67.238)

 

The same ip is on about 50 different pages over the last day or so, and many are in the theme etc, it seems to be going all the way through.  I have tried looking up the ip address, but cannot seem to get it from what is shown, it comes up with no data. 

 

Any clue?  there are several others similar, but i'm not sure if these are customers or not, certainly blocking the 104.255.67.238 ip, has reduced a lot of activity on 'whos online!)

 

 

 

88-111-33-12.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com
5/8/15 5:42 AM
3654
success.png 200
GET
HTTP/1.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64
 

 

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Oh, so do I need to unblock the 104.255.67.238  ip?

Also why was it on so many products?

I cannot believe the dresscode is that heavy!  It is madness.  according to AWstats my visitors are using less than 1GB, yet I've used 30 more than that in a week!  My website is virtually dead since the moves, sales are down by 80%, but bandwidth has quadrupled what I was using before.  At this rate my website will shut in about 1 week, and i'll be going out of business!

 

 

Any advice would be appreciated

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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the reason I blocked the ip was this:

 

 

Blacklist IP: 104.255.67.238     ( 104.255.67.238 ) IP Location: USA IP Owner: Volumedrive   The reason for adding in Blacklist: Majestic12 Web Crawler - Website Extractor Latest SpamBot Visit / Activity 17 Apr 2015, 14:10   Do any Crawler Bots use this IP ?: Yes Is this IP on a Blacklist ?: Yes Total Browsers from IP: 1 browsers » Create Record Time: 16 Mar 2015, 10:24

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Run a few pages of your site (the index page, a product page, perhaps the reviews page if you have a bunch of reviews) through GTMetrix.com and it will give a broad indication of how your site performs, and what (if anything) can be done to improve it.   

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Thank you, I tried that and got a timed out error! 

I have super slow internet here, and its a nightmare.  It makes everything difficult, and some things impossible.  If you have a speedy unlimited internet and a spare five mins my website is sewingchest.co.uk!

 

kellie

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Your site takes forever to load. Times out in fact. You should consider optimizing your pics, big pics will eat up your bandwidth and affect your performance in the SERPS. You can examine your server logs to see what is accessing your site. Here is a page load time tool:

 

http://www.webpagetest.org/

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I tested your site, it timed out.  Thats bad, very very bad.

 

On the index page:

It timed out at 15 seconds, after 974 requests for different bits and pieces, totalling 5.3Megabytes

 

On a product page (random example):

It took 6.27 seconds to load, after 113 requests totalling 4.3Megabytes

 

With these times and loads it's not surprising that your site is pushing a lot more bandwidth - each page load is somewhere between 4 and 5 megabytes !!

 

Now to a page that carries very little images, the shipping page:

Load Time: 4.45 seconds

Requests: 82

Data:  1.9megabytes

 

So, your "lightest" page (shipping.php) is 1.9 megabytes which takes 4.45 seconds to load.  What customer is going to wait 4 seconds for a page to load, let alone even higher fo pages with images.

 

I then test (using the same tool), the shipping page of the Responsive osCOmmerce build - this gives a baseline figure to aim for:

Requests: 13 

Data: 164.1 kB

Load Time:  0.671 seconds

 

So, we can deduce two things;

 

1.  Your images are too big.

2.  Dresscode is very "heavy"

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Fabulous! 

I didn't think my images were very big, I downloaded them, all  but 2 are less than 1mb, most less than 200kb, I can shrink them, but not sure anyone will see them!

As for dress code, I chose that from a selection of themes recommended by the host, I wish they had said it was heavy - I would have stuck with my boring site!  - I wonder if its a massive trouble to undo it?

 

On my website stats I see that 'other logins' are using most of the bandwidth - who are the other logins? are these visitors?  my login doesn't seem to be too greedy, so maybe some of the other logins are also me?  I really don't get this. 

 

My old site broke down after a web update.  I have paid out for someone else to do the new site, and paid for new hosting (despite having already paid my old host), so I could go SSL and get Paypal working again.  So far its turning into a disaster.

 

I'm at my wits end with this.  I thought getting someone else to sort it was the solution, but instead I've ended up with bigger problems!

 

 
 

Authenticated users (Top 10)   -   Full list  -   Last visit  Authenticated users : 1 Pages Hits Bandwidth Last visit my log in 1 1 15.60 KB 24 Apr 2015 - 08:42 Other logins (and/or anonymous users) 34,214 1,007,384 56.74 GB  

 

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Don't think I did anything!  I did ban the ip address above, but that's all I think!

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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I find it realy slow to load - especially the home page

Now running on a fully modded, Mobile Friendly 2.3.4 Store with the Excellent MTS installed - See my profile for the mods installed ..... So much thanks for all the help given along the way by forum members.

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Yes its crap.  I am going to resize all my images when I have found my photoshop book on how to do it!.  and if I had installed the theme myself i'd uninstall it right now, but I haven't a clue about it!

 

I think I might just go and cry somewhere.  2015 has been a bloody shit year for me so far!

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Yep same here but in my case I am accessing from Japan so distance and all...somewhat understandable but still slow compare to other shops that I have accessed from other members here in the forum.

 

Have you tried once to deactivate/remove the code for the first slider and the parallax further below? And see how that affects the page load speed.

How many path links to javascript files do you have inside the template_bottom.php? You do have them inside the template_bottom.php right?

And just out of curiosity, why do you have two times social media button/icons on your homepage? One seems to be from the template and one seems to be added after.

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Hosted in USA, so would be (presumably) good for visitors from the USA.  From elsewhere, not so good.

 

Where are most of your clients?  

 

UK: host in the UK or Amsterdam.  

Europe:  host in Amsterdam.

USA:  host in the USA.

and so on.

 

Of course, this does not help with Bandwidth - that's another matter that needs attention.  

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@@zefeena I use paint.net to resize images as I find it quicker and easier than photoshop - then I run them through file optimizer http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/3328724/fileoptimizer-680329/which reduces the size of the pic files by around 25% with no quality loss.

Now running on a fully modded, Mobile Friendly 2.3.4 Store with the Excellent MTS installed - See my profile for the mods installed ..... So much thanks for all the help given along the way by forum members.

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Hi,

I didn't know where I was hosting.  I didn't know it was an issue.  I sell sewing stuff - i'm girly that way.  Computer stuff bores me to death and I've only done all this myself for the past 10 years because i'm a control freak.  so finally I decide I need to delegate a little as I was getting under so much stress, and look whats happened!

This is why I try to do it all myself - now I don't have a clue about this website.  I didn't load it, I didn't design it, and its all looking like a horrible and expensive mistake.

 

My previous host became unreliable.  Paypal would not work on my site and it wasn't SSL so I started again from scratch and someone else has done everthing - I haven't touched it apart from loading those stupid images on the front.  The dresscode theme is a nightmare.  It seems you have to go into the code and change stuff and I can't find where.  The 'from the blog' is preloaded, but serves no purpose.  The facebook links etc actually linked back to the dresscode people.  I had a real job to find where to change that, and who knows how many links there are in it diverting people away.

 

It it possible to host the website in two places - I sell worldwide, but my customers are mostly uk.  I've just paid for the year with this host, and I don't want to move again i'm going crazy with this.

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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may be a silly question - but cant whoever set up the site for you sort out the speed problems etc? They shouldnt walk away until you are happy with the product.....

Now running on a fully modded, Mobile Friendly 2.3.4 Store with the Excellent MTS installed - See my profile for the mods installed ..... So much thanks for all the help given along the way by forum members.

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I have emailed the host, but obviously there is a time difference - as its in USA!!!

I hope they will be able to sort this.  Something needs to be done.  I lost so many sales in April and May is going the same way.  This is my only income and I am fast running out of savings.  I don't think I can survive another couple of months this way.

I had just thought getting someone else to set it all up would have resolved all the issues and giving me a great website which I could get on with running my side of things.  It hasn't worked out quite that way, and I remember now why I have always been independent - and this is not helping my trust issues!

I suppose I should have looked for a pre-made shop or something, but didn't think i'd find one that would be compatible with my database and I couldn't face re-listing everything from scratch - not with 0.2mb speed internet connection (and that's a good day!)

Well i'll go and pack the few orders I have, and then crack open the wine and drown my sorrows I guess.

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Your bandwidth problem must surely be related to the fact that you are using big pics. Don't ban anymore IPs or do anything else before you resize your images and then re-evaluate. If your site is slow, users will be frustrated and move onto the next site, so that explains your loss in sales. There's no way your images can average 200K+. 

 

You are running approximately 1700 products. Search for a program called Easy Thumbnails (i am sure there are many others). It will allow you to resize all at once, just back up your original images first in case you're not happy with the result.

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I believe the main problem is not the product images, but is the Dresscode theme.  It's so heavy, look a the result I psoted for the shipping page.

 

My first advice would be to get rid of it.  Why?

 

1.  As mentioned, it is "heavy"

2.  It is a FORK of osCommerce, meaning you can never ask for help with it here.

3.  Does it suit your clientbase?

 

My next advice would be to move the site back to a host in the UK or Amsterdam.  Amsterdam is good as it is close and has a direct under-the-north-sea link.  Hosting in the USA is no good for your site.

 

Bear in mind...you (presumably) were using the same images for your products prior to the addition of the dresscode and moving host, so the problem is not those solely those images.  Reiterate:  dump that theme.

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I've been sent a list of ip's who are apparently using a lot of bandwidth and its been suggested I block them - can anyone tell me if I can see a list of my customers ip addresses - I don't want to block customers - I've lost too many already with this fiasco!

thank you.

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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Burt, I absolutely understand what you are saying.  but I do not know how to get rid of it.  I paid for the website to be built, the theme added (it was selected from those suggested) , and to be hosted.  I have just paid for the full year.  I no longer feel I have any control over it.  I do not know how to remove the theme.

 

My images by the way are by the way around 200kb each.  some are bigger, only a couple are over 1mb, many are much smaller.

 

and yes the images loaded before, the website was plain and absolutely fine. 

 

I only changed as my host could not provide SSL when I asked 5 years ago- and when I tried to contact them again, I found their webpage non-existent, and their facebook page not updated in 2 years, the webs support email bounced!

My website went haywire after updating to the current version paypal stopped working, so after many desperate posts here I was at a loss.  I needed a fast solution and was approached by a hosting company on here, who was a regular poster and seemed to know what he was on with so I though i'd be okay.  I didn't know hosting in the US was going to make it slow, and certainly didn't think the dresscode theme would be a problem!

 

To be honest, having paid my first host for the year in March, then having paid this new host for the year in April, plus the cost of 'making the site', and with an 80% drop in sale I'm not sure if I can afford to move again.  Yes, I would if I could guarantee everthing returning to normal, but I can't and I really do not understand the webs program code, I have just ambled through for the past 6 or 7 years to be honest.

Running a botched up version of  osCommerce Online Merchant v2.3.4 bootstrap with the dresscode theme installed, numerous add-ons, terrible coding, terrible website, but will have to make do until I have made up for my losses and can risk shutting down for a couple of weeks while I start all over again. - I did not install my program but am endeavouring to fix it with your help.

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I can only agree with what burt said.

Dump that template! I know it is rather hard or impossible to change the host to Amsterdam or whatever other European country at this very moment but at least try to install a clean fresh osC shop (osC 2.3.4 BS GOLD if you want responsive design) and see if that is still slow or not. If a clean new osC install is slow then you will need to change the host.

 

1.) Backup your database

2.) Install fresh, new osC 2.3.4 BS GOLD shop

3.) Buy a template so that you can get rid of the standard look. Some templates are easy installs!

4.) Upload back your database

5.) Install those few addons and modules that you need to run the shop for now.

 

Work on details later...you have to get your shop running again that is your priority right now.

I know that buying another template means spending money "again" but this time it is good invested.

The good thing about it all is YOU will be the one in control and you will know where is what this time.

Just my 2 cents.

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