How do we make our site faster?

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by andyleem, Aug 15, 2007.

  1. #1
    Hi
    Our site thesharpedge.com seems to be running slowly for customers, pages are taking longer than expected to load and images etc. This has always been like this so we were wondering if there was any way to increase speed. Would we have to upgrade hosting?

    Our cpanel states..
    Disk Space Usage 190.66 Megabytes
    MySQL Disk Space NA Megabytes
    Disk space available Unlimited Megabytes
    Bandwidth (this month) 4751.95 Megabytes

    Any help appreciated.
    thanks
    andy
     
    andyleem, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  2. bobchrist

    bobchrist Active Member

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    #2
    Are you using flash/graphics on your pages?
     
    bobchrist, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  3. andyleem

    andyleem Active Member

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    #3
    Only a few banners and pictures but they are not really large size.
     
    andyleem, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  4. Game Producer

    Game Producer Well-Known Member

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    #4
    It loaded smoothly for me... but anyway - here's some suggestions:
    - reduce quality of banners
    - try .gif instead of .jpg if possible (for some banners it might be better option)
    - consider replacing big headline images like "LOGIN" with CSS+text
    - consider replacing "free delivery" banner with simpler text or smaller pic
    - cache
    - consider replacing the header banner, and use CSS if possible
    - think if you need images on those "top 10" things

    And last but not least:
    - consider getting a faster hosting provider
     
    Game Producer, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  5. sparksflying

    sparksflying Peon

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    #5
    In fact I havent seen a site as quick :)

    Pages could be gzipped.. ( not sure how to actually do this..) but you may be doing this already?

    Otherwise looks fine to me ( connecting from Ireland..)
     
    sparksflying, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  6. xboxundone

    xboxundone Well-Known Member

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    #6
    i hate to say this but it may be your server. are you on shared or dedicated?
     
    xboxundone, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  7. SEO expert

    SEO expert Peon

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    #7
    I found these tips to be very useful. Thanks!
     
    SEO expert, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  8. andyleem

    andyleem Active Member

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    #8
    Shared hosting. I think it may just be some users who find our site slow. I will use those tips though. Thanks
     
    andyleem, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  9. selbourne

    selbourne Peon

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    #9
    I have read somewhere that the way you have the HTML tables written could make a big difference as well. Maybe you could search on google
     
    selbourne, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  10. chuckd1356

    chuckd1356 Active Member

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    #10
    Divs are better than tables.
    Rewrite and/or optimize.
     
    chuckd1356, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  11. john269

    john269 Notable Member

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    #11
    The thing with alot of people is that if they host their site on a shared hosting account and move it to a dedicated server, they expect it to increase it's speed dramatically. Yes it will increase it's speed, but it's not just the server that can slow a site down.

    Other things will also do this. Things like your database query optimization, size of pages, how many images you have per page, size of images, your page caching techniques, etc.
     
    john269, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  12. Game Producer

    Game Producer Well-Known Member

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    #12
    Quite true john - SQL query optimization and caching pages are two more good ideas.
     
    Game Producer, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  13. circuscircus

    circuscircus Peon

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    #13
    Sometimes web hosts do something called "maximizing the cabinets/servers" and basically what they do is they stick as many servers as they can into 1 cabinet

    On each server, they stick as many shared hosting accounts as possible

    So even though you have X amount of bandwidth, the amount of bandwidth you have at ONE time is very limited if they max out the cabinets/servers
     
    circuscircus, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  14. ajaykumarmeher

    ajaykumarmeher Banned

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    #14
    I do not have any issues with your site. it is coming normally. The ppl who hv complained may be on a dial up so they may experience slow browsing.
     
    ajaykumarmeher, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  15. bogs

    bogs Active Member

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    #15
    avoid large media files... use it if necessary ... ;-)
     
    bogs, Aug 15, 2007 IP
  16. Game Producer

    Game Producer Well-Known Member

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    #16
    Hey, a friend of mine recommended me this:
    www.cachefly.com

    Haven't used them so cannot personally recommend, but my friend said:
     
    Game Producer, Aug 16, 2007 IP
  17. webcosmo

    webcosmo Notable Member

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    #17
    Your site is of average speed, there are chances to improve.
    You are using too many images. You wanna minimize that, use as much css as possible. For example the Free Delivery image is big, you can make it css based text.
    Also you are using lot of image ads, you know thats not the best thing an e-commerce site can have.
    If you get rid of these images, your site would speed up some.
    Also on your code make sure you retrieve only the data/columns you need. Any write operations on database should be done by stored procedures. Hope that helps.
     
    webcosmo, Aug 16, 2007 IP
  18. populartemplate

    populartemplate Banned

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    #18
    Optimizing images work wonderings.
     
    populartemplate, Aug 16, 2007 IP
  19. rawwebdesign

    rawwebdesign Well-Known Member

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    #19
    images, and clean up your php
     
    rawwebdesign, Aug 16, 2007 IP
  20. jakawakaman

    jakawakaman Guest

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    #20
    Rewrite the tables.
     
    jakawakaman, Aug 16, 2007 IP