Comments on: 5 Methods to Enhancing Page Load

By: Seth

Seth — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:11:00 +0000

Thanks for the quick and easy to follow information on page load. I was curious about this topic because I was wondering why many high traffic blogs seem to use less images than other blogs. Now I know why!

By: Mlcisme

Mlcisme — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:13:31 +0000

Thanks for the info Darren. I just installed WP Super Cache on my blog and the page load time is down pretty dramatically. I suspect that the slowness before was due to javacode in widgets, but the pageload delay is down now so all is well.

By: Keral Patel

Keral Patel — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:23:56 +0000

My blog isn’t getting that much traffic as of now. But still knowing this is good that I can be rest assured when there will be some traffic flowing in.

By: Fiona Fell - The Profit Maximising Web Geek

Fiona Fell - The Profit Maximising Web Geek — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 05:24:50 +0000

I am looking to reduce the number of images on my website, in hopes of dropping the page load speed.

At this point I am in a re-design phase so will just dig a little deeper to make things run much faster.

I should not be so emotionally attached to ‘pretty’ fonts and let them render as text instead of putting them in images.

Fiona Fell
The Profit Maximising Web Geek

By: Doug C.

Doug C. — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:43:25 +0000

Well, I managed to slim the design of TBODC down quite a bit. It”s not only faster but even looks better than before. Moo-haa.

By: Derrick

Derrick — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:42:26 +0000

Good article very helpful tips for increasing page load time. I always find that heavy javascript and the infamous side tool bars are the culprits. Heed darren’s words of advice.

By: John Hoff - eVentureBiz

John Hoff - eVentureBiz — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:54:10 +0000

jhay said it well and I was waiting for someone to mention it.

Knowing Javascript works slower and your website loads from top down, place your javascript to load after your content.

This way while people are waiting for your javascript (oh yeah, they don’t wait for that), they can read your content.

By: Anup

Anup — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:06:06 +0000

One additional point about 3rd party JavaScript slowing things down. If you put those script tags at the bottom of your page (before the ) then it will load last, letting the rest of your page load, even if there is a problem connecting to that server.

Potential problem with that: if say you have your google analytics or related script at the bottom, someone can click a link before the script has loaded, so it may not record that click, so your analytics may be missing some data. If your pages are small and you follow those other rules, caching etc, then that problem *might* not be an issue, depending on your scenario.

By: Christopher Clayton

Christopher Clayton — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:46:10 +0000

Nice article!
im going to fix up my numourous blogs now!

Thanks Aaron!

LETS BLAME ENTRECARD FOR MAKING BLOGS SLOW!
=P lol

By: Wakish

Wakish — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:20:59 +0000

I’m with Andrea on this one.. ;)

Cache might not be always a solution, since “levels” of cache will compromise other ‘aspects’ of your site. (from a programmer’s point of view)

- Wakish -

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:53:30 +0000

For images here is another tip: resize them to the correct size on the server but also put the height/width in the IMG tag.

This allows the browser to continue rendering the content without having to wait for the images to download.

By: Mike Nichols

Mike Nichols — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:34:50 +0000

I use an Adobe product called ImageReady for Mac that does a good job of compressing images for the web. Lets you preview the different compressions. Pages load a lot faster. Still have readers using modems!

Watch for flash from offsite — ex YouTube. If their server is slow, then your page loads will be slow, too.

Does WP SuperCache handle flash, too?

By: John Sullivan

John Sullivan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:47:06 +0000

Hey Darren
Well no one comes to my blog anyway;) But I tried that wp-super cache and kept getting 500 error .I’m going to be looking into something soon cause my blog is popping.Thanks for the invite on linked in.I was having a rough day and caught that at the end of the night and it threw a whole bunch of gas on the fire:) You inspire me always and I do consider you the blogger that I’m hoping to mimic one day in what you do for the new man and the world.
Sometimes the smallest things we do have the greatest impact:)
Like saying Thank You.Thanks for everything I have learned from you.I really do appreciate it.
Your #1 FAN
John Sullivan

By: jhay

jhay — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:13:03 +0000

One simple trick I do to speed up the load times of my blog pages is to place the java-written metrics code on the footer instead of the header.

So far, it works like a charm.

By: Hamdani

Hamdani — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:10:34 +0000

I don't used image header at my website. I used text instead. I use image a lot for my post. I used GIMP to reduce my image size to below 25 KB to 35 KB. All image is hosted using free and fast image hosting server. Previously I let 10 post to be loaded at the frontpage of the blog then I limit it to 2 post. When I do this, the first 10 days of August, my unique visitor increase by 5%, my returning visitor had increase by almost 36% with average time spent on site increase to 90%. I took Darren advice but improvise a little bit. About the sidebar, not just the sidebar, the footnote also sometimes can cause a bad crawl. I put to much information at my footnote. I am in the process of redesigning the website into a lean design with the target finishing date before 1 September 2008. Flash video only make the site became slow. I regret that I used it at my website. The new design will totally take it out and put it inside the post (so only those interested only will read the post. Those who have high bandwidth) . Third Party Java Script inevitable, unless we don't want to use Adsense. Possibly incorporated banner management plugin for adsense or since almost all web hosting account have banner management under GPL license that bundle with Fantastico, interesting to look at it now. It will reduce the amount of those 125x125 buttons. I trace 80% of my problem came from how much post posted at the front page. Already experimenting with Limit Post Plugin for WordPress.

By: Bennie

Bennie — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:06 +0000

I ageed with the 2nd point. Thrid party Javascript give me headache :-)

By: Girts

Girts — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:19:47 +0000

Good article! …..Where to find good coder to make unslowly page with good webfriendly stuff?

By: Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:12:31 +0000

third party JS tend to slow down the site alot. In my new design I am trying to avoid them as much as I can. WP Cache is always good.

By: green blog

green blog — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:02:18 +0000

What I’m current working on at the moment is to reduce the number of images to bare minimum and avoid using javascipt at all. I don’t think this will affect page presentation at all and based on a pool of opinions from visitors to my site, they still enjoy it as before when the site is full of images and use of heavy javascript.

By: Sharninder

Sharninder — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:39:38 +0000

Totally agree with the Images and Caching part. I used to have a pretty heavy template earlier and the page load time was noticiable. My current template loads up pretty quickly and the difference is noticiable.

http://nomadicrider.com

I don’t still have the number of visitors to warrant a caching plugin or memcached but those that do have the numbers, caching is definitely the way to go, more so since most information on blogs never changes once the pages have been created.