Admin is slow or hangs forever

Dealing with performance issues in Admin

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:

  1. When you DO log into the admin area, turn off version checking here: Admin > Configuration > My Store, and set Show if version update available to false.

  2. IF AND ONLY IF you can’t log into the admin area AT ALL, try editing the /admin/includes/local/skip-version-check.ini file 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.



Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified March 2, 2021 by Scott C Wilson (c19545b).