• OzzModz is no longer taking registrations. All registrations are being redirected to Snog's Site
    All addons and support is available there now.

Site Performance - optimization workshop thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
jimsflies said:
Where are you hosting your site(s)?
Click to expand...
Believe it or not my main site has been on godaddy - I've used them for ten years now, never had alot of issues. Have two hosting accounts with them.

When there were some issues, they pretty quickly over the phone get me out of the call center and on the phone with a real tech. This is how I learned most of this stuff about shared hosting, call centers and their blame shifting I'm posting.

I think you should do alot more situational testing before considering changing hosts, especially since you have been happy with the service so far. It is very easy to wind up worse off - and truly you're not bad off as it is. Especially since you put in all that work optimizing.

Once again - I have never seen a host of any kind have good first byte results with vB4... In fact Ozzy here is on a dedicated, big pipeline host and his first byte time isn't any better than yours.
 
So I went ahead and signed up for the free cloudflare account just to try it.

Here is the latest webpagetest:
WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : captivereefs.com - 02/12/14 18:29:27

There is something glitchy with my site loading though....it started several days ago. But I can't figure out what I did or installed that is causing it. It renders the navbar and body content, but hiccups before it creates the background fill for the body_wrapper. My test site does not behave this way at all. I have tried everything I can think of to figure out what is causing it...including disabling the few extra mods that are on the main site. Verify mod settings are the same between my test site and production site with mods that I thought could cause issues.

If anyone can think of what would cause that delay. I would love to hear it. My test site is here: Captive Reefs. The issue is most noticeable on chrome.
 
Last edited:
Still been working on slimming down my site. Here's my latest...getting better, eh?

WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : captivereefs.com - 02/18/14 02:24:21

It is getting more difficult to find savings...but there are still a few to be found. In some cases, there were gradient files for title headers and buttons that weren't being used in the final rendering because I had additional css that overwrote them.

I also was able to eliminate the request for the dropdown menu arrow by using the pseudo :after css3 attribute to put the unicode arrow symbol instead of using an image.
 
Last edited:
jimsflies said:
Still been working on slimming down my site. Here's my latest...getting better, eh?

WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : captivereefs.com - 02/18/14 02:24:21

It is getting more difficult to find savings...but there are still a few to be found. In some cases, there were gradient files for title headers and buttons that weren't being used in the final rendering because I had additional css that overwrote them.

I also was able to eliminate the request for the dropdown menu arrow by using the pseudo :after css3 attribute to put the unicode arrow symbol instead of using an image.
Click to expand...
Like anything else there's always a point of diminishing returns. We must strike a balance between form and function we're individually happy with.

You've done a damn fine job with yours, Jim. You should be proud.
 
jimsflies said:
I'm obsessed now... :)

Did you get the parallax script to work?
Click to expand...
I did and your help was invaluable - the instructions on the source site for the JS file are incomprehensible. But alas, I decided I didn't need it as it was. But thanks for helping me out with a trick that might come in handy later on!
 
Still working on slimming down my vb4 site. Here is the best test so far:

WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : captivereefs.com - 02/22/14 14:15:27

Does it seem a bit faster than when we started this?

The latest trick I'm using it styling with glyphs. In essence, I'm using a dingbat type font to replace small icons.

I also have the non-rendering scripts loading asynchronously and implemented the jquery lazy load for images.

I am trying to figure out some easy way to combine the css and js files or at least the common ones. So far I haven't found the solution. I'd like to get below 50 requests. But I'm sure I can get below 60 before I'm done.
 
Last edited:
You have greatly lowered the number of requests and the byte load. Speed usually results.

Keep in mind that with vB4 you can only get so far with that then you hit the wall of diminishing returns. Because of its bloated database and overall design, vB4 even fresh out of the box isn't a stellar performer.

Consistent 3.5 second load time for vB4 is pretty darned good.
 
Still working on crunching the site down...here is my latest:
WebPagetest Test Details - Dulles : captivereefs.com - 03/05/14 02:32:35

I eliminated a few more requests by dumping the sprites and using a custom icon font for all the little icons on the page. If I could come up with a way to combine the css and js, I'd really be doing well.

I also think that cron loading on every page load is a waste of resources. I need to find a vb 4 solution to this...there was a vb3 option, but not sure if it works.

I'd also like to know why there are two facebook, requests one of which redirects to the same file? Anyone know how to get that redundant request out of there?
 
Not sure if version 4 fires cron the same way v3 does. If so, you can put that "cronimage" hook anywhere - it doesn't have to be in the footer. You might try putting it on a page that is hit alot less.
 
Yep you wanna have the curvy Daisy Duke, not the anorexic Kelly Ripa.

But the obese LuLu Roman MUST be avoided if at all possible.
 
I keep getting F's for:

First Time Byte
Compress Transfer
Progressive Jpeg

Apparently GZip is enabled on my server and I have put the following in my .htaccess

<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</ifModule>

I have also turned off gzip on the forum, why is nothing happening?

Help please on sorting out these issues
 
mort2412 said:
I keep getting F's for:

First Time Byte
Compress Transfer
Progressive Jpeg

Apparently GZip is enabled on my server and I have put the following in my .htaccess

<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</ifModule>

I have also turned off gzip on the forum, why is nothing happening?

Help please on sorting out these issues
Click to expand...
I keep gzip ON for the forum. Never used it in htaccess.

Click on the waterfall table, that will load the waterfall with details of the calls, then below the waterfall you'll see "view all images" click on that, and all your images load.

From there, any one that says "Not Progressive" click where it says "analyze jpeg" and the site will load your optimized, progressive jpeg image on the next page. It is usually the bottom one of the three examples they give.

Save it to your computer, rename it to match what's on the server, and upload it to same location allowing overwrite. And do this for each one that is failing the grade.

I can help alot more if you give a link to your test result page, or to your site.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top