We've just started to use the latest version of Joomla and Opencart for our stores but we've noticed it takes forever to initiate. Below is a link from Firebug showing the load time of the pages. Does that first load seem unusual? The 1st one is the URL I am trying to access within our site like "www.yoursite.com/blue-shoe". Below the URL are more details, hosting, etc.
http://s1288.photobucket.com/user/dirkd9000/media/firebug-net_zpsb864e462.jpg.html
The pages take about 4-6 seconds to start but from there it loads very fast. I am currently using most of the methods to boost speed of our pages such as removing product count, GZip, JCH Optimized and Joomla's Cache Plugin. We are currently using Hostgator VPS lev 5 with 1.8 GB RANm CPU 2 cores and 1.4 TB bandwidth. Maybe we need to upgrade or find a different host?
Google pagespeed website gives us a score on our pages that range 68-74 points. Other sites such as gmetrix rate us very good too. I'm thinking this could be a query issue on start up. My boss is really breathing down my neck about this and I'm not sure what the issue is. My hosting says everything is fine.
I know the images cause some delay but which is easy to fix but again I don't understand what the hang up is at the very beginning. Thanks!
