Page Timing Out

A couple of times now I have received a fatal error that starts out with:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded

I'm working in a protected directory that can only be seen by me and am not exactly sure what is causing the time out. My immediate reaction was to simply bump it up to something higher than 30 seconds (like change the setting to 60 seconds instead), but I can't seem to tell where to do this. I looked in Global Configurations and see nothing that relates to this timer.

Where do I make the change? Does this maybe have to be done via .htaccess instead of through the control panel?

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /****************/modules/mod_news_pro_gk4/gk_classes/gk.thumbs.php on line 224

Surely there is a way to fix this.

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /**************/libraries/joomla/filesystem/file.php on line 373

I've tried searching the forum for an answer to this. I saw someone with a similar question from 11 months ago that was never answered. I saw someone else who bumped their time up to 60 seconds (how?) and that didn't work.

What am I suppose to do? I can't turn on a site that has a 30% chance of generating this message when someone loads the page.

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /*************/libraries/joomla/registry/format/ini.php on line 119

I know I'm not the only one encountering this problem. Surely there is a known solution.

Just spent 40 minutes talking with support to make sure my server is not experiencing a heavy load or anything that could be causing this from a hardware side. His description is that the "site is looping" (whatever that means). I am waiting at the moment for the Senior Tech to look into the problem, but my guess is it is nothing to do with the hardware and will come back as a design issue.

I will keep you updated on what they say, but really, if anyone has a solution to this problem, please let me know. I mean, I know I can go to my php configuration and bump the time up to higher than 30 seconds, but that is like treating the symptom instead of the illness. I need to know what is causing this in the first place so that I can correct it. I haven't changed anything other than the navigation menu, so I dont think it is anything I have done.

---

Ok, they came back and told me the problem was that there was no htaccess file installed. After installing a basic joomla htaccess, everything seems to be coming up like normal. The page still takes more than 30 seconds to load (I'm clocking it at about 40 seconds), but at least the page comes up instead of an error message.

Now I've just got to find out why the page takes so long to be rendered. There's nothing on it except the default/dummy content. I have put together a pretty extensive navigation menu, but I can't imagine that is causing it. Anyway, this one can be marked as solved.

Please show us your site URL, you can check php GET request in firebug console and check which request cause this problem.

Thanks for that tip. Haven't installed firebug since I've had this computer so I'll try that later and see if it tells me anything.

I've unlocked the folder so that it is viewable...

http://www.urlremoved

Like I said, the error message is taken care of now and at least the page comes up, I'm just not sure why it takes so long.

I haven't done anything with this template other than to create a lot of K2 categories. I'm currently trying to put together a navigation menu that links up with the categories. Other than that, everything should still be exactly as it is in the quickstart. Now, I do have a LOT of categories, like 1,400 or so, but I don't think that should cause me a problem (maybe I'm wrong about that though).

Ok, so the mystery seems to be solved. According to the Sr Sys Admin that looked over my account, the problem is the combination of K2 and mod_news_pro_gk4, with News Pro being the primary problem. As you can see from his message (below), the load time of the page was reduced to less than 2 seconds by simply turning this module off.

Now, I like this module so I'm not going to rag on it. Of course, that also means I would like to continue using it, even though I find a 40 second page load to really be unattractive (to say the least). So now I'm wondering if there is something I can do to speed up the performance of this module, or if it really is a situation where I have to choose between the module and fast page loads.

I have thoroughly investigated your Joomla and I have found the reason for the 30+ Second page load times;

There are two modules/plugins that are causing this in conjunction. This is System-K2 and mod_news_pro_gk4 in conjunction.
If I disable mod_news_pro_gk4 by itself it bring down the load time significantly as well, so that module is the main issue.

However, by enabling joomla cache and disabling mod_news_pro_gk4, I was able to get your site load time to 1.5 seconds which is pretty good with the large amount of content and joomla modules that initially load.

I also verified that all of your databases are proper with no errors. They are in excellent health.

However, that module seems to be the main culprit for the awful load times. I would see if you can some how replace the module with an alternate one that functions similarly or you could contact the developers of that module and see if they can't help you with it.

Now that I look at this deeper, I think he might have misunderstood a little. I dont think there is an issue with the module at all. I think the issue is just that the module is used in several places and preloading images for all of them. So when the debugging saw "mod_news_pro_gk4", it was actually seeing several instances of the module combined. I think I can turn a couple of these off and replace them with something else and that should have me loading faster without sacrificing the look of the site. Thanks again for your help looking into this.