Speed up your pages!

[inspireme]

A slow page will annoy your visitors and lose business. I have been optomising my site today the main indexU page used to take 13.78 seconds to load (most of it being my graphics) With optomising the page its now 9.22 seconds (* on 56k modem)

the worst culprit is a few o fthe indexU graphics - they can be compressed without any problems for example :

the blue rounded corner : rrightcorner_blue.jpg on the index page is 8.17 KB (8366 bytes) I optomised it and now its 452bytes.

Thats one hell of a saving!

Also i changed :
1) Left and right.gif (reduced them so they are just 1 cm tall ) they repeat anyway so whats the point in having them a mile long?!
2) arrow_red2.gif is tiny ! It compressed to 64bytes!
3) folder.gif down to 139bytes
4) comressed the .css file its now 2554bytes

Also I removed the login button and replaced with the already loaded "submit button" then compressed all the html.

I would recommend you choose only one rounded corner colour and use that on the menu. Not only does it look better but limits the http requests and files needed to download.

test your site : http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

the sub 8seconds is a little optomistic with indexU but it could be done if you dont have a big header like my site does.


best of luck,

matt.

[inspireme]

Anything else that you guys have done that will increase load speed? any php or page tweak tips?

[landuyt]

i just started with tuning the pages.....thx for the advise...
but a bigger problem is currently comming up...

i passed the 500 categories and the indexu software is turning his back to me...

( ex:... latest new, top rated, hot listings, etc... are taking too long to load...if there is no solution i have to delete them....

also uploading links is taking a lot more time....

are there any tips to push indexu a littlebit more?

thx....

[inspireme]

Hi, i see your problem, seems odd as all the other pages load fine. Maybe tis because those pages dont cache. (but then neither does index.html and that seems ok)

[esm]

From a coding standpoint, INDEXU does little to provide speedy pages. There are several places where the coding could be improved greatly, which by itself could make the difference in displaying the page in a timely manner or displaying it agonizingly slow.

Any page that has to deal with multiple categories will be slow. Although v3.2 improved the category speed, there are still coding problems that could be corrected. At least thing run with v3.2

Prior to v3.2 some category intensive pages would not even run. While they run in v3.2 don't expect any improvement in v3.3 if the Beta is any indication.

NOTE: INDEXU never had a problem with 122,000 links. just the 5,000+ categories in dody's demo database.

And while I am far from an expert in the matter, take a look at the files in the lib folder. Not only the size of the link.class.php file but all the functions in it. You've got admin only functions in the files even if it is just the user using them. Or you've got functions that relate to the browse page when the only thing the user is doing is looking at the review pages.

And some of those function are for features that are either not used or used only sparingly. But the still get loaded every time!

Yep, I know the browser will read the cache if it can and there could be a problem with too much disk usage if files are too small. But I just can't help but think that INDEXU has not reached that happy medium between the two.

Back in the old days, it was called bloated code. I guess now they call it OOP.

The more I work with my own LinksCoder program the more I like it. Back in the summer of 2004 when v3.1 was crashing on dody's demo database of 5,000+ categories and v3.2 took an eternity to display those category intensive pages, my LinksCoder was breezing thru those pages.

And I don't say that to promote LinksCoder because I have no intention of selling it to the general public. Maybe more on that later.

Yep, I am doing all I can to stay away from graphics. But I just gave up on INDEXU doing things in a speedy manner. I have written my own!



.

[inspireme]

The catagories problem aside, an averaged size directory with a few thousand links should easily get sub 8 seconds on 56k modem (sub 8 seconds is classed as fast)

Although the php code is large and it does load extra data this isnt a massive problem as the client never actually downloads it... it stays server side... your only talking fractions of a second for the server to skip through the functions it does not use.

I took off 5 seconds load time on EVERY PAGE, just by combining, resizing, shrinking, compressing and streamlining the graphics and html ( plus the .css file )

[esm]

.

http://www.nicecoder.com/community/s...ead.php?t=2339



.

[inspireme]

thats intresting... that is one area that php code could be improved - some of the database queries get a bit involved.

another tip for the main page :
Limit the description that displays for each of the new links to just a few lines, hee I limit it to 250 characters :

 $new_links_obj->new_link_number = 1;
	$query = "select distinct *,concat(trim(substring(description, 1, 250)), '...') description
	  from idx_link where suspended = 0 and (new=1 or updated=1) order by date desc, last_updated desc limit $main_new_links";

Their must be more improvements people have done! I really want to hear them!

[landuyt]

great Tip....it definitely improves the speed ....

i putted instead the "..." a "read more" comment...

Would it be possible to turn this "read more" into a link to the detail page of the new added link?

[Shophere]

There are lots of small things that you can do and not withstanding the php coding issue - every little thing helps

here are a couple of sites that may help

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/eff...e-acceleration

[inspireme]

im not sure about the link, its pulling the data striagnt from database in a query... i havent tested this but i "think" you could do it with code along these lines :

select distinct *,concat(trim(substring(description, 1, 250)), '<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/detail.php?id='."$link_id".'[read more]</a>') description

that should create a link as you need it. I cant think how you would do it with the search engine friendly urls though..

[landuyt]

hi, i've tested it and it doesn't work for me.... ( gives un unexpected error )

but if someaone can make it work with the friendly urls... i would galdly hear about it ... it seems a great addition to the main page.....

[inspireme]

your right, the reason it had unexpected errors is the double quotes "" close the sql statement rather than putting in the link id.

My logic is flawed anyway because the sql is choosing which campsites to display, and as such does not have the link_id to display like i was suggesting. I will take a look now, its probably fairly easy... give me 10 mins!

[inspireme]

I knew i was over complicating it, the solution is simple :

get rid of the '...' in the sql statment (index.php)

load up msg.php and go to line 45 and change it as follows (change in red)

// show new links in main page 
$msg["10001"] = "
  <table width=100% border=0 cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"5\">
  <tr>
    <td width=30 valign=top><%new%><%updated%></td>
    <td>
	  <a style='font-size: 11px; color: #00309C;'
	  href='detail-<%title_mod%>-<%link_id%>.html'>
	  <b><%title%></b></a><br><%description%>  <a style='font-size: 11px; color: #00309C;'
	  href='detail-<%title_mod%>-<%link_id%>.html'>
	  <b>[read more ...]</b></a>
	</td>
  </tr>
</table>
";

search engine frindly as well

I liked your idea, it bugged me when people ended the description with a full stop, then a further three fulls tops got added. Some had ... and others ....

this is tidier see:
http://www.bigfreeguide.com/camping/index.php

[landuyt]

You are the greatest !!! thx inspireme....
you helped me impove my site a littlebit more....