Jump to content

Skeetabyte


RaGhul

Recommended Posts

Hi, all!

I just started a new website this week, and would REALLY appreciate ANY comments and thoughts from all of you.

It's been a while since I've posted here, but I know all of you are an extremely talented and intelligent group of people, and I would truly value your opinions! Also, I may be looking for article contributors.

;)

Here's the site:

http://skeetabyte.com

Thx!!

Edited by RaGhul
Link to comment
Share on other sites


It takes nearly a whole minute to load the front page from here (and no, I'm not exactly on dialup!). Hopefully it's not always this slow. It would likely help quite a bit if you enabled gzip compression. The html size would be perhaps 1/4 of what it is now, and you'd also save a LOT on the fairly large amount of javascript, resulting in far faster page loads (although latency seems to be more problematic, at least now and from here)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm using GoDaddy hosting. I've been thinking I might need to switch. However, the page loads up fairly quickly for me here in Houston. Maybe it just needs to be propogated somehow?

There's a WordPress plugin called 'W3 Cache' that caches your page. It's supposed to make it faster. I tried it for a day, but it messed up my WordPress theme, lol.

What's your connection speed?

What's gzip?

And... is there really that much javascript? I haven't sniffed around all the WP files yet, so I honestly don't know.

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's your connection speed?

7 and 10mbit.

What's gzip?

Page compression done by the web server. It saves bandwidth (cheaper) and makes pages load faster.

And... is there really that much javascript?

About 125KB or so (again, would be lots less using gzip compression), which for the main part is jquery. You could use a CDN (e.g. Google's) to deliver it (just about guarantees it's already cached, faster, saves you BW, etc)

Anyway, it's loading significantly faster at the moment, about 10sec or so but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Hmmm page loaded in a metter of seconds for me.

In 4h or so, the server load (database, disk IO, CPU, network, etc) and a whole lot of other factors (routing tables, etc) might have changed quite a bit. That's the thing, it could be loading lightning fast in a couple hours then a couple hours later be slower than a dead snail -- especially on heavily-oversold hosting (there's "only" 3000 or so sites served on that box)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a WordPress plugin called 'W3 Cache' that caches your page. It's supposed to make it faster. I tried it for a day, but it messed up my WordPress theme, lol.
Considering the benefits of serving a static page versus dynamic content, it would be well worth figuring that out.
What's gzip?
As Coffee said, it's a compression algorithm for compressing content from the webserver to the client browser. Given you're serving about 34K of data, gzip compression should yield about a 75% (in some cases more) reduction in size transmitted from the server to the client. Couple your server with no compression and the fact that you've also told the client not to cache ANYTHING from the webserver, you're unnecessarily spending time re-serving UNcompressed data to a client EVERY time they visit the site - from the headers visiting your site this evening:


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:50:30 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://skeetabyte.com/xmlrpc.php
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=p1j9plhvn47a6m8u5b5e57jif1; path=/
Set-Cookie: wassup=MTdmMGQxYzJiMTY2NDM2ZTI3YTM1Yzg0YWFkZDgwMzE6OjEyNzEyMjY5MzE6Ojo6MjA5LjY4LjEuNjM6OnJ1aXMucGFpci5jb20%253D; expires=Wed, 14-Apr-2010 06:40:31 GMT; path=/
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

And... is there really that much javascript? I haven't sniffed around all the WP files yet, so I honestly don't know.
125K isn't a LOT of javascript, but given the site's design most browsers won't start displaying the page until the javascript has been downloaded and compiled as it's all in the page HEAD. Someone on a slower connection will very likely see page load delays, as would someone visiting the site while the server running it is under load. Compression and caching - if you aren't changing the content too much (and things like images and javascript aren't changing), it would be best to allow caching at least for a day or so, along with implementing compression. There are at least 1371 sites hosted on that server alone that matched a reverse-IP lookup to the server hosting your site, so the fewer resources your site requires to actually serve content, the better.

Consider using http://ismyblogworking.com and/or http://redbot.org to get more info about your blog, and hints as to what else you can do to make it more efficient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for all the input, guys! (Hey, kel, nice to see you!!)

I've installed the following plugins:

WP Super Cache - This plugin is supposed to cache pages, as well as compress them (gzip). A quick-check of the source code from the page seems to indicate it's working (I think)

Use Google Libraries - To use Google CDN libraries for java, instead of getting the java from Wordpress

Are they working well?

@CoffeeFiend, cluberti...

Do you notice any speed improvements?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PS...

Yeah, GoDaddy hosts around 3,000 websites. That's a lot. And I've noticed the speed DOES go up and down at various points in the day. I'm seriously considering a switch. Any suggestions?

I've set WP Super Cache to hold pages for 'one hour'. Should I go longer?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

gzip is working:


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:01:00 GMT
Server: Apache
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip

So is caching:


HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:01:01 GMT
Server: Apache
Connection: Keep-Alive, Keep-Alive
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99
ETag: "cf2031-a19-4bc37ee0"

The javascript (it's NOT java -- completely different thing!) i.e. jQuery is loading from Google's CDN:


GET /ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js HTTP/1.1
Host: ajax.googleapis.com

...at least partially! It still tries to fetch a 2nd copy of it, and all includes, from your site right after:


GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com
GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.easing.min.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com
GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.lavalamp.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com
GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/tabs.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com
GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/superfish.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com
GET /wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.bgiframe.min.js HTTP/1.1
Host: skeetabyte.com

It's already quite a bit faster, but fixing that would further reduce page load time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Btw, CoffeeFiend, I just posted about free coffee at Starbucks tomorrow... did you know about that one?

I didn't. However, it's at least a 15 minutes away (1/2h return trip). And even when it's not free the place is jam packed so you have to be pretty lucky to find anywhere to sit. Last time we went to 2 and ended going somewhere else instead. I can't imagine what it's going to be like tomorrow (assuming the promo even applies in Canada).

My problem isn't paying for our lattes, it's finding time to go and being lucky enough to have somewhere to sit and chat with the lady ;)

Edit: seemingly it was already on slashfood, not sure how I missed it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

K, I'll see what I can do. Thx. ;)
Looks like the page has these JS files in it's includes, so it's going to download them no matter what - perhaps removing them from the includes list would allow the page to work still?

From the head of the base page:


<script type="text/javascript" src="http://skeetabyte.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.easing.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://skeetabyte.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.lavalamp.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://skeetabyte.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/tabs.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://skeetabyte.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/superfish.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://skeetabyte.com/wp-content/themes/premiumnews/includes/js/jquery.bgiframe.min.js"></script>

Technically, it's downloading these files because you've told it to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the input, guys!

@CoffeeFiend,

I had no idea Starbucks in Canada were like McDonald's in Russia! Dude!

I looked at the suggestions that both of you make, but all those lines of code have 'themes' and 'premium news' in them. I'm pretty sure trying to skirt around them would break my theme somehow. So, I'm satisfied with the current performance of the webpage as is.

Do either of you have your own websites?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...