Hi drew,
30,000 products in one catalog and thousands of products in one category is going to load slowly. In testing, we’ve noticed query and load times start to increase with around 1,500 products in the same catalog, and, depending on how many custom fields, etc. you have, can become significant at around 3,000 or 4,000 products in the same catalog.
Of course this all depends on your particular setup. However, with 30,000 in one catalog, it’s unlikely that you’re going to get fast times. We would definitely recommend breaking that up into several catalogs to help speed up load times.
Additionally, some other things to check if you want to speed up query/load times are:
First, make sure the “Product Search” option (in the “Basic” area of the “Options” tab) isn’t set to “Name, Description and Custom Fields”. The custom fields part adds a lot of queries, which has the potential to slow it down. Try any of the other options.
Also, try removing two of the three layouts. For example: [product-catalogue id=”X” excluded_layouts=”Detail,List” starting_layout=”Thumbnail”]. This will cut the amount of queries by two-thirds.
You can also try enabling “Thumbnail Support” (in the “Basic” area of the “Options” tab).
If you are using the premium version, you can also try setting a lower number of “Products per Page” (in the “Premium” area of the “Options” tab).
