Increase Page Speed Installation Guide

INSTALLATION GUIDE

Increase Page Speed for OpenCart

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Thank you very much for choosing one of my OpenCart extensions, you've just helped to support a (very) small business. Like many of you out there I shared a dream of owning my own business, and by you purchasing my software extensions you help to make that dream a continued reality.

If you need any support or assistance with installation please visit the 'Support' section of the documentation, it will provide you with various ways to get in touch with me should you need to.

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Installation Instructions

Guide & Requirements

Version 4.0 introduces an automated installer which takes care of making changes to the OpenCart database, appending the primary .htaccess file, and verifying that required permissions are set correctly. Though there is still a step or two that is a manual process, and other tweaks one might want to go through to ensure their website is performing at it's best.

INITIAL INSTALLATION

VQMOD

Many of you will already have vQmod installed, those who don't it can be downloaded here: VQMod downloads page. If you haven't upgraded to the vqmod 2.2.x series of vQmod I highly recommend that you do so now as it offers performance benefits over previous generations, especially if your shop is running a large number of mods. If you are fairly new to OpenCart & vQmod an installation tutorial video can be viewed here.

UPLOAD IT

Located in this this package is a series of folders ('admin', 'catalog', 'image', 'min', 'system', and 'vqmod'), these folders should be uploaded via FTP to your store root (matching existing folders). If you do not currently have a FTP client, I highly recommend FlashFXP. You will need to know your websites FTP connection settings and username and password, these are provided by your web hosting company.

RUN THE INSTALLATION APPLICATION

If you are not currently logged into your OpenCart admin panel, please login now (or if you are already logged in, please visit your dashboard page). This will trigger the Increase Page Speed installer to run. In most cases, everything should report okay, in the event that you experience any error notifications, please skip forward to the installation errors section, it contains details on how to deal with any encountered errors.

USER GROUP PERMISSIONS

Increase Page Speed adds several cache clearing mechanisms which require user group permissions to access. As such you must go into system > users > user groups and add appropriate permissions to be able to clear cache via the menu.

If you do not use another group other than 'Top Administrator' and are not concerned with different user level permissions simply click the 'select all' for both boxes. Otherwise the new feature can be individually sought out with the id of: 'tool/clearcache'

CRON JOB

Login to cPanel (or DirectAdmin, or whatever control panel you web host is providing) and goto 'Cron Jobs', create a new entry to run every 15 minutes.

The command line should look something like this :
php -q /home/yourwebhostusername/public_html/admin/ips_cron.php

If you experience problems running the above command you can alternatively use:
wget -q http://www.yourdomain.com/admin/ips_cron.php

If you are uncertain of the base path, just open your config.php in your open cart admin directory.

Once added, login to your admin panel, goto System > Settings > edit store. Click on the 'Increase Page Speed 4.0' tab and note the 'DB Cache' Status. Wait about 15 minutes, refresh the page ~ ensure that it is updating. Once you are satisfied that it is indeed running go back into cPanel and change the job to run daily.

If you web host does not offer Cron Jobs you can setup an account with this free server and use the wget method above. https://www.setcronjob.com/

INSTALLATION COMPLETE

You may now reference the feature guide to learn about the features of this extension, how to configure them and the ways in which they can benefit your shop.

INSTALLATION ERRORS

PERMISSION VERFICATION FAILURES

There are 3 sets of permissions which may need to be set on your server depending on how the web server is configured. This can be done by applying a CHMOD 755 command (on occassion some servers require 777).

Write permissions are required for the following files and folders:
file ./min/min.config
folder ./system/cache/min
folder ./system/cache/seo

UNABLE TO MODIFY OR LOCATE .HTACCESS FILE

If you have not already renamed the .htaccess.txt to .htaccess please do so now, it is located in the root directory of OpenCart. If you are just now enabling this for the first time and your store is in a sub-directory such as 'shop' or 'store', then you will need to make a change (roughly around line 20) to state the directory it is located in.

If you received an error that the installation program was unable to modify the .htaccess file please add the following to the end of the file:

## INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ##
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Connection keep-alive
</ifModule>

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header append Vary User-Agent
</ifModule>
## END INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ##

UNABLE TO REMOVE INSTALLER APPLICATION

If you receive this error, it simply means that the installation application was unable to remove itself from the vQmod xml directory. Please manually remove this file from your OpenCart website: ./vqmod/xml/install_increase_page_speed.xml.

UPGRADING TO VERSION 4.0

Important Information You Should Know Before Upgrading

The release of version 4.0 bring a large re-structuring of content and a slew of new configuration features to the settings panel. The following files should be removed from your OpenCart store prior to uploading the 4.0 release package.

Delete the 'min' folder from your store root.
Delete 'vqmod/xml/a_increase_page_speed_for_opencart.xml.
Delete 'vqmod/xml/a_increase_page_speed_for_seo_caching.xml.
Delete 'vqmod/xml/hbm_opencart_unit_testing.xml.

Take note of your existing settings (especially if a CDN url has been defined). I do this on occassion during a support session to overcome auto-detection failures, or to support strange multi-store setups on occassion.

Once those files have been removed and you are confident you are aware of existing settings, simply upload the new package in it's entirety and login to your store admin panel (or if you are already logged in visit the dashboard page), the new installation package which is now included should warn you of any permission changes that need to be made, . You may also wish to breifly review the installation instructions, and the feature guide.

You will need to re-setup the 'Increase Page Speed' settings panel within store settings, many of the options have changed, and while many of them perform a similar task they may have been renamed in the new version. Additionally the number of settings has increased dramatically and all the related vqmods have been rolled into a single package.

NOTE: I will be unable to provide upgrade support until the new year. Do not be in an utter rush to upgrade, the userbase of this extension has become quite large and I can only provide support to so many people at once. I am also implementing a new policy regarding upgrade support: Any upgrade support required will be provided free of charge for up to 90 days after purchase, any support required thereafter will have a $10USD fee (payments can be remitted via PayPal to payments@hunterbm.com).

THE FEATURES OF INCREASE PAGE SPEED

All You Need To Know About Configuring Increase Page Speed

A full length features guide will be available in an upcoming patch release, looking to get this release pushed out before Christmas so something had to get cut and this was it.

VERSION HISTORY

Learn about all the changes that are happening

Increase Page Speed v4.0 Released

Released on December 24th, 2012

Version 4.0 brings the biggest update yet, with a vastly improved settings panel and more than double the features of past control panels. HTML Minifier has been fixed and some great new features are available, all the changes listed below.

Added full 'clear cache' support for vqmod 2.1+
Added clear cache mechanism for SEO Cache
Entirely re-designed 'SEO Cache' to make it fully compatible with any SEO URL modifications.
Seperated CSS / JavaScript minifiers to allow for seperated controls.
Added detection options, and version overrides to serve Jquery base and Jquery UI from Google CDN.
Added 'Small Image Inline Encoding' to CSS Minifier (alternative to sprites).
Added BETA/ALPHA of 'JavaScript Deferance' (do not use this on a live website).
Added Generic support for Content Delivery Networks and static content cookieless content serving via sub-domain (images/css/javascript).
Added Options to enable/disable SEO Caching
Integrated speed analyzer into core release with added options to enable/disable in the IPS panel.
Added advanced configuration options and debugging to minifier (settings in IPS panel).
Fixed problems with HTML Minifier.
Add logo image dimensions specifier.
Added various dimension specifiers for images in modules.
Added APC support for minify cache.
Added min.config writer based upon IPS settings panel settings.
Entirely overhauled IPS settings panel.
Fixed several compatability quirks.
Added JPEG Compression settings percentage variable.
Added new (fancy looking) documentation.
Added automated installation application to take care of many of the install requirements.
Depreciated/Removed 'Smush.It' image processing due to poor performance / occassional time outs.
Added image processing library vqmod for legacy OpenCarts to add proper PNG compression support (pre 1.5.4.x series).

Patch Release v3.2

Released on August 28th, 2012

Minor patch/update for release version 3.0.

Fixed bug with compatability for OpenCart 1.5.4.*
Fixed bug with compatability for OpenCart 1.5.3.*
Fixed bug where JAY6390's page cache would cache data prior to IPS modifications.
Added FirePHP support
Shifted hbm_opencart_unit_testing.xml output data to FirePHP.

Patch v3.1 Released

Released on August 27th, 2012

Minor patch/update for release version 3.0.

Fixed bug with in memory caching code addition which caused 3.0 to fail entirely.
Fixed bug which caused JAY6390 cache clear to appear twice.
Fixed bug with cache clearing success variable being called incorrectly.
Fixed bug with CDN urls not functioning correctly.
Fixed bug with in memory cache setting not being read onto settings panel.
Changed language additions to use * instead of english for non-english admin panels.
Changed Yes/No , Enabled/Disabled options to be option buttons instead of dropdowns to better conform with admin interface.
Added custom vqmod to remove JAY6390's clear cache menu item.

Increase Page Speed v3.0 Released

Released on August 26th, 2012

Minor patch release of series 3.0.

Fixed Several bugs with regards to CSS/JS combination.
Fixed CSS rendering problems with legacy IE/Chrome browsers.
Completely re-written minification gather processing.
Converted To System Library
Improved compatibility for OMTex , Shoppica 2 , etc..
Adds support for conditional php includes of CSS/JS.
Adds support for variable php pathing of CSS/JS.
Removed requirement/use of header_min.tpl for faster processing
Corrected bug with short cache lifetime.
Primary vqmod renamed to prevent ordering conflict with certain page cache extensions (namely JG's).
Added Now removes all comments in combined/minified Javascript files.
Added Keep Alive Connections For Servers which aren't enabled by default (requires mod_headers).
Added in-memory cache support for supporting servers (replaces file system cache with in-memory caching).

NOTE: no support is provided for setup/config of these systems
Xcache Support http://xcache.lighttpd.net/
APC Cache Support http://php.net/manual/en/book.apc.php
Additional in-memory caching mechanism to follow.

Added HTML minification support.
Added image dimension specification to featured module.
Added image dimension specification to carousel module.
Added compatability for OpenCart 1.5.4.x.
Added Cache Clearing Mechanisms in Admin for: VQMod, Images, Minify, System, JAY6390's Page Cache, All (Less Images), All (Including Images)
Added Smush.It image processing system library
Added CDN support for Minified URLS (entry for HTTP / HTTPS CDN location)

SUPPORT CONTACT

If you require support, please get in touch!

Send us an e-mail

If you are in need of support, please send an e-mail. For fastest installation assistance please include FTP and OpenCart admin panel login credentials.

NOTE: E-mail contact form not functional at this time

Contact info

Phone: +(855) 469-9932
E-mail: jeff@hunterbm.com
Website: www.hunterbm.com

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