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How to Fix Slow Product Saving

This guide helps you identify and resolve issues when saving products takes unusually long in cobby.

Symptoms​

  • Product uploads are extremely slow
  • Saving changes to products takes many minutes or hours
  • cobby appears to freeze or hang during save operations
  • Progress bar moves very slowly during product synchronization

Prerequisites​

  • cobby is properly connected to your Magento store
  • You have access to Magento admin panel
  • For advanced solutions, you may need developer access to Magento configuration

Understanding the Issue​

Slow product saving is usually not caused by cobby itself, but by how Magento processes changes. Several factors can affect performance:

Step-by-Step Solutions​

Solution 1: Allow Time for Large Changes​

When making major updates to your product data:

  1. Understand that extensive changes require more processing time
  2. Be patient - Magento needs time to process large batches of product updates
  3. Consider breaking very large updates into smaller batches

What qualifies as major changes:

  • Updating hundreds or thousands of products at once
  • Changing multiple attributes per product
  • Bulk price updates across many products
  • Mass category reassignments

Expected result: Processing time is proportional to the number of changes. Large batches will naturally take longer.

Best practice: For very large updates, split them into batches of 100-500 products.

Solution 2: Check Index Settings (cobby version 1.46 and earlier)​

If you're using cobby version 1.46 or earlier, index triggering can slow down saves:

  1. Log into your Magento admin panel
  2. Navigate to System > Index Management
  3. Identify which indexes are set to "Update on Save"
  4. Before your import, change affected indexes to "Manual" mode:
    • Select the index
    • Choose "Manual" from the actions dropdown
    • Click Submit
  5. Run your product import in cobby
  6. After import completes, switch indexes back to "Update on Save"
  7. Manually reindex:
    • Select all indexes
    • Choose "Reindex Data" from the actions dropdown
    • Click Submit

Expected result: Saves complete much faster with manual indexing, and you maintain data consistency by reindexing afterward.

Note: This issue was resolved in cobby version 1.47 and later.

Solution 3: Configure Varnish Cache Settings​

If your store uses Varnish cache, it can delay product changes:

  1. Verify if your store uses Varnish
  2. Understand that Varnish caching can delay product changes by up to 20 minutes
  3. Apply the cobby Varnish configuration:
    • Log into your Magento admin panel
    • Navigate to cobby settings (System > Configuration > Services > cobby)
    • Configure Varnish to properly clear cache when products are updated
    • Ensure your Varnish configuration allows cobby to bypass or clear the cache for updated products
  4. Test product saving again

Expected result: Product changes should complete faster and synchronize more quickly.

Troubleshooting​

Still experiencing slow saves?
  • Check your server resources (CPU, memory, disk space)
  • Review Magento logs for errors during save operations
  • Check for conflicting extensions that might slow down product saves
  • Monitor database performance during save operations
Verify performance
  • Test saving a small batch (5-10 products) to establish a baseline
  • Compare performance with and without cobby to isolate the issue
  • Check if the slowness occurs only with certain product types or attributes

Still Having Issues?​

If product saving remains slow after trying these solutions:

  • Contact cobby support at [email protected] with:
    • Your cobby version
    • Magento version
    • Number of products being updated
    • Approximate time it takes to save
    • Any error messages from Magento logs
  • Consider consulting with a Magento developer to optimize your server and database configuration