[RaGhul]

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!!

This post has been edited by RaGhul: 13 April 2010 - 10:43 AM

[CoffeeFiend]

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)

[RaGhul]

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.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Hmmm page loaded in a metter of seconds for me.

[CoffeeFiend]

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

What's your connection speed?

7 and 10mbit.

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

What's gzip?

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

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

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.

Kelsenellenelvian, on 13 April 2010 - 05:36 PM, said:

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)

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Point well taken...

[cluberti]

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

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.

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

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

RaGhul, on 13 April 2010 - 04:53 PM, said:

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.

[Tripredacus]

Also don't forget to change your "About" page, it still has the WordPress template wording in it.

[RaGhul]

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?

[RaGhul]

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?

[CoffeeFiend]

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.

[RaGhul]

K, I'll see what I can do. Thx.

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

[CoffeeFiend]

RaGhul, on 14 April 2010 - 05:19 PM, said:

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.

[cluberti]

RaGhul, on 14 April 2010 - 05:19 PM, said:

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.

[RaGhul]

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?

[CoffeeFiend]

RaGhul, on 15 April 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

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

Never been to Russia, so no idea. But it's jam packed with university students. In fact, sometimes I almost wish for double price coffee, so there would be place to sit down for sure I'd sure love to visit a Starbucks that looks like this though.

RaGhul, on 15 April 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

Do either of you have your own websites?

I don't have anything special to talk about so I don't have a personal website. There's well over 100 million blogs out there, so I don't think starting yet another one is going to really change anything. I think it would mainly be a drag (a commitment to write something worthwhile regularly). Definitely not my bag.

[cluberti]

RaGhul, on 15 April 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

Do either of you have your own websites?

Yes, I do.

[RaGhul]

@CoffeeFiend
That DOES look like a cool Starbucks. I love looking up pics of American brands in foreign countries, too. A Navy friend of my sister sent her a gift package for Christmas. We were about to eat the Snickers bars when I noticed they had Arabic written on them!!

@cluberti

Quote

Yes, I do.

THAT'S specific! What's the name? You got any websites besides cluberti.com? How much traffic do you get?

[cluberti]

cluberti.com is the only one I work on personally - I do a lot of web dev for others, but I don't go posting my client list. One, my employer would probably not appreciate it, and two, it's really not relevant.

[RaGhul]

I'm not getting jack-squat for hits. Any ideas?