How do I test loading speed of site?

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by master-yoda, Jan 18, 2010.

  1. #1
    My website seems to be a bit slow in loading. Can someone please let me know of a site or tool where I can test the speed my website loads.

    Thanks
     
    master-yoda, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  2. K_E_M_O

    K_E_M_O Peon

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    #2
    K_E_M_O, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  3. master-yoda

    master-yoda Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Thank you for the link.

    My results:

    URL: www.everest1953.co.uk
    Size: 17.96KB
    Load Time: 0.93 seconds
    Average Speed per KB: 0.05 seconds

    It might not look slow in figures but it is slow loading. I have no big photos on the home page, how can I make it load quicker?
     
    master-yoda, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  4. mastermunj

    mastermunj Well-Known Member

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    #4
    Install firefox extension - YSlow, and see what parameters are ranked bad in it.
    If everything is well optimized as per YSlow, then try and analyze it with internet speet at your IDC as well as at the pc from where you are accessing site.
    tracert can also be helpful manier times.
     
    mastermunj, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  5. K_E_M_O

    K_E_M_O Peon

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    #5
    if it is the website in your signature, it seems there are many images on your website (such as /img/hp/base/ba16.jpg)

    You may decrease count of images. Because loading all of them is taking time.
     
    K_E_M_O, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  6. mastermunj

    mastermunj Well-Known Member

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    #6
    YSlow analysis about your website:

    Check the attachment.. You need to seriously work upon it for making it load faster.


     

    Attached Files:

    mastermunj, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  7. master-yoda

    master-yoda Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Thank you 'mastermunj' for doing the YSlow analysis about your website.

    To be totally honest with you the results dont mean that much to me as I dont really no anything about the workings of a website. I will have to get a friend to look at it for me.

    Thanks again for your time.
     
    master-yoda, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  8. hartwm

    hartwm Member

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    #8
    firefox+firebug+page speed
     
    hartwm, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  9. snarble

    snarble Peon

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    #9
    Does the load time of a site make much difference in terms of SEO? It seems like all pages load reasonably quick through firefox for me.
     
    snarble, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  10. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #10
    One of the best ways to figure if a site is going to have problems in terms of speed can be done using the 'web developer' toolbar for Firefox. You install that one, and under it's "information" menu item is "document size".

    A good total size for a website should be around 80k in this day and age, and as a upper limit I don't like to go past 150k. With most people tightening their belts and going down to things like verizon's $15/mo 768kbps/384kbps plans 150k is about right.

    In additon you should look at the number of files involved. For every file past the first eight in most browsers you can see a speed decrease unrelated to actual transfer of data and based almost entirely on the user's ping time to the server. Usually a good rule of thumb is to say 200ms per additional file past the first eight on a good day, and a full second for dialup or cheap cable users on a bad day.

    Running your page past that we see:

    Documents (2 files) 19 KB (21 KB uncompressed)
    Images (51 files) 185 KB
    Objects (0 files)
    Scripts (8 files) 9 KB (93 KB uncompressed)
    Style Sheets (3 files) 10 KB (13 KB uncompressed)
    Total 223 KB (312 KB uncompressed)

    Which is pretty painful... The first time someone visits the page on a good connection you are looking at 63 file handshakes, for the majority of people that's around 11 seconds of overhead loading all those images and scripts... and someone in the boonies with piss-poor 'ping times' to your server could see almost a minute or more wasted - and that's not even talking file sizes.

    In terms of size for what you have there I see no reason for it to be more than 100k. You've got three content images on the whole page, the rest being simple borders that could easily be reduced down to ten files or less using sliding doors type techniques.

    The whopping 93k of javascript certainly isn't helping matters, especially since I see little on that page to warrant the use of .js excepting perhaps a small HTC file to bring IE5 and 6 into this century on hover states. It's an excellent example of javascript for nothing but bloat... especially the largest offender:

    http://www.everest1953.co.uk/hp_gen_subnavig.js

    Which wasn't a good idea code-wise in 1997 when it was neccessary, certainly has no place now that CSS2 is real world deployable.

    In addition to scripts and images you've got four separate CSS files without even having media types involved. While certainly you have that 'addthis' widget, the rest of those really should be condensed to a single file to reduce handshakes - preferably targeting "screen, projection, tv" and making separate CSS for handheld and print.

    Finally there's your HTML. Overly complex markup and outdated coding techniques can take longer to render - and you've got those in spades; Heck, it's aces over eights.

    The lack of a doctype means you are either coding wrong with IE as your target explaining why the layout is broken here in everything except IE, or that you have to hack your way past the broken box model. Either way, get a doctype on that, preferably a STRICT one. Transitional is for supporting old outdated crap coding habits, not writing new sites!

    Past that we have presentational attributes, tables for layout, presentational tags, javascripted rollovers, and in general the markup is so mid-1990's browser wars it begs the question I've found myself asking a lot lately "what do you even have CSS FOR?!?"

    Spacer .gif's, presentational images in the markup - it explains the use of over 50 images to do the job of two dozen or less.

    Another scale I use to determine how well optimized a page is size-wise is to take the size of the content, increase it 50%, add 200 bytes for each image/object embed that is content (you have THREE, maybe five if you count that stupid "share" script bull) and add 1.5k for headers. For your page that's 1.5k of actual text on the page, so a good guesstimate for a properly written page size should be around 4.75k - you have 18k, so there's a good deal of useless/unneccessary markup in there. (like pretty much every table and 90% of your IMG tags) -- though I might say it would be a little higher, probably around 8k, given that NONE of your menu dropdowns are showing up as content with scripting off... Even worse, with that 18k of markup you don't even HAVE your primary page content in the markup, and are building it in javascript! Hell, looking at your generated content even the e-mail form doesn't wrap it's inputs, so that shouldn't even work.

    Pretty much if you are using tags like FONT, CENTER, using double-breaks instead of paragraphs, you learned from the wrong people/sources.

    My advice - go back and relearn HTML and CSS from MODERN sources instead of outdated tutorials and guides from the 90's (or people who've not updated thier skills in a decade) so you can throw this mess out and start over with clean semantic markup and separation of presentation from content - on which you can hang simpler/consistent images without relying so heavily on javascript for things you don't need .js to do. (or in a handful of cases, should be handled server side via something like PHP)

    Done properly that page could easily be brought in at around 8k of markup, 15k of CSS for 'screen', somewhere around 15-20 images totalling well under 80k, and the only scripting called being the off-site ones (google analytics, addthis, and the poll)
     
    deathshadow, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  11. Web Dev

    Web Dev Peon

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    #11
    Web Dev, Jan 18, 2010 IP
  12. johagulo

    johagulo Peon

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    #12
    Use the yslow addon for FF
     
    johagulo, Jan 19, 2010 IP
  13. master-yoda

    master-yoda Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Thank you 'deathshadow' for your input, it is very much appreciated.

    I am suprised at all the things you have pointed out! I did not build the site by hand code, it is a sitebuilder with a template where I just add text/picture where I want it to be shown. I dont really have any control over the 'code' behind the scenes.

    The reason I went for this was I dont have the time to learn all the coding etc and this seemed an easy and quick option.
     
    master-yoda, Jan 19, 2010 IP
  14. sp2h

    sp2h Peon

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    #14
    thanks for this grateful post i check my site speed...
     
    sp2h, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  15. allby

    allby Greenhorn

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    #15
    use yslow from yahoo. It is a firfox addon you can install in your browser.
     
    allby, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  16. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #16
    Well, so long as you understand WHY it has those problems. As a friend of mine (guess which one) used to say, you can have a website:

    1) Cheap
    2) Developed quickly
    3) Well coded

    Pick only two.
     
    deathshadow, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  17. easyforexsignals.com

    easyforexsignals.com Peon

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    #17
    Ive used both, and Pagespeed is much better than yslow, much more detailed reporting.

    You will need a http traffic viewing tool, such as httpfox, httpwatch to do proper analysis.
     
    easyforexsignals.com, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  18. prateek.mallapur

    prateek.mallapur Peon

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    #18
    prateek.mallapur, Jan 20, 2010 IP
  19. Lex350

    Lex350 Notable Member

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    #19
    This is all you need. It is even recommended by Google.
     
    Lex350, Jan 20, 2010 IP