slow load time

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I have been usinghttp://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/GBkEbJpw5/http://bluehillschurch.or... to help optimize site loading time. So far I have went from 99% slower than all websites to 96% slower. Improvement, yes, but not enough. Some graphics/apps still show up on the load time analysis although I have removed them both from the page and file manager.

Our site ishttp://www.bluehillschurch.org.

This is my first time building a website, and am giving myself a crash course in the process. I am not a developer or an expert, but would appreciate help in understanding how to build a simple, fast website that still looks good. What should be avoided, what should be included, ect. There have been numerous requests to include live streaming and/or video links on the home page. I know this often slows a site down, so I have not attempted that yet. However, I know sites that have many videos, and still load reasonably fast. What is the trick to optimizing load time while using graphics/videos/apps?

 
CygnetMidwest replied on at Permalink Reply
CygnetMidwest
Site optimization is a huge issue that really needs more than a forum post can convey. But, I'll try to steer you in the right direction.

First off, get YSlow to analyze your site:http://yslow.org/ (available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera)

I ran YSlow on your site, and it graded you with a B (82). Not too bad.

It gives a few suggestions on how to improve the site. A few big ones:
-- Too many HTTP requests. You've got 9 JS and 9 CSS files being referenced. That's a lot. Each request slows down the site.
-- Put your JS at the bottom of the site, just before the closing </body> tag. This will make the page seem faster: all the content can load before the JS.
-- Don't resize images in the browser. Your background image is scaled up. It not only looks kind of bad, but it also slows down the site.
-- Optimize your images more. This is a hard one to balance, but if you an make any images smaller, it will help. Here's a couple of programs that can help: Mac - ImageOptim -http://imageoptim.com/ , Windows: Riot -http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

A couple other things that may help:
- Minify your CSS and JS.
- Serve images from a CDN.

Here's an article that has more info:
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/how-to-speed-up-your-websit...

I'd highly recommend getting YSlow as a first step. It has a ton of info in it.

Good luck!
theone85ca replied on at Permalink Reply
I hate to start up an old thread again but this is EXACTLY the same problem I'm having.

If you look it's the initial HTTP GET that's causing the slow load times. I can recreate it on my website but cant seem to solve the problem. This has got to be something with C5 somewhere...
Phallanx replied on at Permalink Reply
Phallanx
An easy one to try is to turn off the Concrete5 cache completely and clear the cache. It's been shown to cause problems.

I have also come across excessive time-to-first byte times because of a typo in the site.php - a missing quote.

Another reason can be that there are in fact errors/warnings, but because the sites Debug Mode is set to hide them; everything looks OK. Turning on the "Show errors in page" in the "Debug Level" settings will reveal if this is the case.
theone85ca replied on at Permalink Reply
Perfect, that worked like a charm!

Since when did Cache cause issues like this?!

Thanks soo much!
Phallanx replied on at Permalink Reply
Phallanx
It's always been suspect but the definitive answer came from the work by brownwingstudio here:

http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/customizing_c5/cache-caus...

In fact. I also have my suspicions that you can't truly turn it off completely.
mhawke replied on at Permalink Reply
mhawke
Phallanx, you're the expert on maximizing speed. Could this be related to nginx configuration. The last 2 complaints of slow speed in the forums that I've tried to help with were both hosted on a shared hosting plan using nginx as a server. Your Blue Hills Church site has 420 other sites on the same nginx server.

http://www.my-ip-neighbors.com/?domain=www.bluehillschurch.org...
Phallanx replied on at Permalink Reply
Phallanx
@mhawke
I didn't think nginx was supported for concrete5.

I don't know much about nginx but I believe you have to specifically configure it to use the zend framework (the cache system concrete uses)
mhawke replied on at Permalink Reply
mhawke
I guess that's my point. I have been a lurker in many of the discussions here on how to set up nginx for C5 and I didn't think it was ready for prime time.

I have an add-on for Chrome called Builtwith Technology Profiler that sniffs through the page and reports all kinds of details. It identifies nginx as the server for Blue Hills Church site. It might be identifying nginx as a false positive but it's been pretty reliable in the past.