Let’s face it, who likes waiting in line, on the phone, at a traffic light, for a blog page to load? I don’t see too many hands. It is okay to be kept waiting if you’re playing chess, but not reading blog posts.
Test your webpage load times and if they do not come down from your webhost in under 10 seconds then you have a problem. How serious? Read on…
Try this. Clear your browser cache of temporary files. Keep your cookies and browsing history, just clear out the temporary internet files (images, html, css, javascript, etc) that are stored by your browser. These are stored in your computer browser cache to speed up subsequent page load times as you visit other pages on the same site.
You may have been lulled into a false sense of security in thinking that your site loads quickly but it is probably because your browser cache has a copy of all your site files – and why wouldn’t it as you visit your site often enough!
Clear your cache now and grab something that measures seconds. If you are on a shared internet connection, check that no one else is using it for the next minute or two.
Ready? Enter your site URL into a browser window/tab but do not press Enter yet. Note the time (seconds) and then press Enter.
Stop the timer when the whole page has loaded. Do not stop the time until your browser activity indicator shows that the website page has been fully loaded. This will also be indicated with “Done” in the lower left status bar of IE and Firefox.
I got the shock of my life when I first did this. My home page load time was just under 30 seconds! Using just three simple techniques below I have got that down to around 14 13 seconds and dropping…
What time did you get?
Less than 10 seconds
Anything under 10 seconds is brilliant. Give yourself a big pat on the back for your choice of theme, images and content in general. Your webhost will also have played a big part in this, but more about that later.
Between 10 and 20 seconds
You at the early warning stage. If this time creeps up you might be in trouble. Now is the time to tweak a few settings. It is not yet time to panic and it will not be affecting traffic too severely, yet!
Between 20 and 30 seconds
You’re approaching a severe warning. It is important that you take urgent steps right now to get that load time back below 20 seconds, at least, within the next few days. Certainly by the end of this week.
Over 30 seconds
The red lights are flashing and the sirens are wailing. You may notice in your server logs that there is a high bounce rate (the number of people who leave your site from the same page they landed on). High bounce can often indicate slow load times as no one likes to be kept waiting.
What can you do?
First things first, go to http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ and submit your site URL for a bare-it-all webpage speed test. You will need to type in a capture style code that prevents bots abusing this service. This test will tell it like it is and lay out every little component it had to load in order to download your blog page. Use your home page URL as that is probably going to be the most visited page.
The report will take one to two minutes as the server is not just working on your site. It does return fairly accurate load times based on file size, the number of HTTP requests and other key factors, in its analysis.
One effective solution to a bogged blog is HTTP compression
One of the more advanced, but very effective, ways of speeding up the downloading of your blog is to set up what is called “HTTP compression, otherwise called content encoding using gzip”. It you have access to your website cPanel, you can turn on the Optimize Website icon in your cPanel. Once clicked, choose the tickbox to compress all content. If you do not have the Optimize Website icon in your cPanel then ask your hosting company if it can be added. Once added, activate it.
After you have activated this option, run your site through the website optimisation analyser and see what difference it makes to the download time.
If you have got it under 10 seconds based on a T1 (1.44Mb) link then congratulations – go write another great post. If not, study the website optimisation analyser report and see what can be tweaked to reduce the load times.
The most effective ways to reduce load time:
(1) Reduce the number of objects on the page (images are usually the main culprit), followed by image file size.
(2) Check for images larger than 10kb and see if they can be replaced with smaller files without losing image quality. This can be done in most image editors by reducing the quality setting to around 65%. Sherryl Perry wrote an informative post about the importance of using optimized images on your blog and it’s worth a few moments of your time to read her tips on this subject.
(3) HTTP Compression as noted above.
Let me know what results you got and if any of the above tips helped you to reduce the load time of your blog home page.
Related posts:
Michael
Thanks for the information on how to check the load time on my sites. I did not realize the cached info would make it load quicker on my computer.
That is unless you regularly clear your cache.
now I know that I should be particular about the loads I placed on my site like for instance picture posts. Thanks for the information about load time.
irmagirl´s last [type] ..GAY DATING SITES
If you need to load a big picture to show something at high resolution, place a thumbnail on your post and link it to a large image stored off the page.
Twitter: robertrupp
says:
Brilliance indeed but I do not have the optimize website icon in my cpanel anywhere so I had to rely on a WP Cache plugin to help with mine. Also the Force Gzip plugin can help too… I use the audit tool in chrome regularly which almost always barks at me for not externally loading javascript and blah blah. What plugin would you recommend?
I’d concentrate on keeping image load times to a minimum as a first priority. See if you can reduce badarrow.png from 170kb down to something under 50k. Second, ask your web host to have it added to your cPanel. It was not on mine until I asked for it via their helpdesk. It is not loaded by default as engaging it adds to the server load. By not putting in everyone’s cPanel, they can get away with giving only to those who ask. I’ve had a bit of trouble with cache plugins and JS/CSS minimizer plugins. I cannot really recommend one at this stage.
Twitter: robertrupp
says:
It’s a 24 bit PNG which is likely the cause… Honestly I want to develop a contact form to take its place i just havent found any plugins within wordpress what generate a decent looking one that goes with the look of the site… Which is obviously NOT the typical marketing site at all =) Then again, I could just code one…
You might just have to hand-code one or pay for a good one. I tried a few free plugin form generators but, as often is the case, you get what you pay for
I didn’t realize how slow WordPress can be if not setup correctly. I thought my hosting may have been the culprit, but I used some of these tips to enable GZIP, compressed and combine CSS/JS files and installed W3 Total Cache. That cut my load times in half!
Mike S.´s last [type] ..Asthma Books
If it’s under 10 seconds, then you’re cool, but that doesn’t mean that you should stop improving there. If there are more ways that you can improve the loading time of your site, then take some time to do so.
Twitter: shopallgreen
says:
Really great information, Michael ! I use gzip compression on a few sites. Some you can really tell a difference and some not at all, which I assume is a standard in differences with server hardware and/or shared hosting and slower servers. Also wi-fi versus hard line still plays a relevant role, although maybe less of a factor as wi-fi improves consistent strong throughput.
Every little bit helps but Gzip is not that good on a shared server if the server load is too high.