Admin is slow or hangs forever
NOTE: Is the slowness only for the admin area? If you also see the same slowness in your storefront, this FAQ does not apply to your situation.
When you first log in to the Admin area, Zen Cart attempts to talk to the Zen Cart versioning server to see if updates are available. If it can’t communicate with the versioning server then it is possible that you’ll see your admin access hang for a minute or so.
There are 2 approaches to addressing this:
-
When you DO log into the admin area, turn off version checking here: Admin > Configuration > My Store, and set
Show if version update availableto false. -
IF AND ONLY IF you can’t log into the admin area AT ALL, try editing the
/admin/includes/local/skip-version-check.inifile and disable version checking:
version_check=off
Other settings that can cause slowdowns
In addition to the settings mentioned above, additional settings you may wish to change to improve admin performance are as follows:
- Admin > Configuration > My Store > Show if version update available
- Admin > Configuration > E-Mail Options > Audience-Select Count Display
Each of these settings has its own documentation.
Software Changes to consider
Sometimes one of the widgets on the dashboard is the cause of the slowness. You can tweak these to improve performance at the cost of less functionality. For example, on busy stores, it might make sense to modify admin/includes/modules/dashboard_widgets/RecentOrdersDashboardWidget.php and turn off $includeAttributesInProductDetailRows.
You can try disabling specific widgets by modifying admin/index_dashboard.php.