Feedback, scroll bars, white check boxes and speed

You can see my feedback on this site:

www.GuineaPigZone.com

I don't understand why it's so slow to load. My site is kind of slow, too, but I just optimized the database last night and cleaned up a bunch of stuff.

But it seems to me, this form should pop pretty quick as there isn't much to it, really. But it doesn't. It's pretty painfully slow.

Also, you can't really see the check boxes on the white background and I don't need scroll bars.

I'm using Rockettheme.

Thanks for any guidance. Would be greatly appreciated. Love the app.

Dear BeTheDance,

Speed:
Indeed your site is very slow to load, however it is not related to Contact Enhanced.
There are several of reasons for that.
1- Your site is loading a lot of JS files, over 250Kb;
2- Your site is loading a total of 891Kb, wow, thats close to 1Mb.
3- If your server is not configured to refuse ping requests, than there is a problem because most of the packets are lost. take a look here:
www.just-ping.com/index.php?vh=guineapigzone.com&c=&s=ping ! You should contact your web hosting provider and ask them if there is problem

Also, Contact Enhanced uses MooTools to validate the form and to perform the AJAX calls;
MooTools is the Joomla default javascript library, therefore most templates use MooTools for their fancy things such as menus and slideshows; Your template or other extensions (modules, plugins, components) shouldn't use another javascript library other than MooTools, however if it does use another library such as JQuery it might be incompatible with many MooTools based scripts; In this case there is no incompatibility, however your site (com_jreviews) is loading JQuery, which adds additional JS code;

Advice:
Always choose extensions that are 100% compatible with Joomla Framework;
Do not use JQuery in Joomla based websites, this way you will avoid incompatibilities and will load less javascript, therefore your website will load faster.


CheckBoxes:
Your template is probably using the Gantry framework and it is adding the left:-10000px;
position:absolute; to all checkboxes; Can you please contact RocketTheme and ask them how to disable this template feature for Contact Enhanced?
I believe there is a parameter for this in the template configuration, but I don't own any RocketTheme template, so I cannot test it for you;
Please Keep me updated;

Scroll bars:
This is because the amount of content that you are loading in the Contact page;
For the Feedback I suggest to create a different Contact with only the information that you want to display. In order to choose a different Contact for the Feedback plugin, please go to Extension -> Plugin Manager, search for Feedback and choose another Contact in the plugin parameters.

You can also Add the custom fields in columns like I have in this web site for the feedback page. Please watch this screencast if you want to learn how to display into columns:
ideal.fok.com.br/joomla-extens...-fields/78-basic-features.html

All the best,

Hi Douglas,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed feedback.

I've removed some things and tried to tweak a bit. I gained back a few seconds, but it's still not great.

I must use jReviews as it's the heart of my site, which uses jQuery.

But, I'm concerned about the server.

I posted a support ticket about it, but haven't really gotten anywhere. They are re-investigating.

I tried doing some searching about ping, but I'm not learning much.

I need more help in getting my server up to snuff. I have a VPS.

I must get this server performance issue resolved.

Do I need to hire someone? I know nothing about servers and depend on my hosting company to help.

Thanks very much.

Dear BeTheDance,

You are right to worry about your server's performance.

About Ping:
You can read more about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping
Some servers are configured to refuse ping requests or just give a very low priority to pings, however I don't believe that's your case because your server is loosing about 90% of ping requests. If it was configure to refuse ping requests the loss would be of 100% and a low priority would just make the round-trip time longer;

VPS is a shared server and if this issue is related to hardware problems the other VPS accounts on this server should also be facing the same issue;

I have a dedicated server with HostDime.com and I had a similar problem once, and HostDime had to change the NIC card;

I'm not a Server/System Administrator, I just have learned a bit about these things over the past few years and, in my opinion, your web hosting service provider should be able to solve this, in other words, I don't think you don't have to hire any one;

I hope you get this fixed soon.

Best wishes,