Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck??

Brian Huether wrote:
 > I am noticing that my site is fairly slow.

seems ok here - about 2, 3 seconds on cable aDSL.


 > Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting
 > performance? My site database is about 1MB now.

size isn't everything (unless you ask the girls) - performance also depends
to some extent on table structure and the complexity of your
queries/sub-queries/views etc.

1Mb shouldn't cause too many problems even with a file based rdbms like
ms-access for example.

--
William Tasso - <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.WilliamTasso.com" target="_blank">http://www.WilliamTasso.com</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck?? 

 > I am noticing that my site is fairly slow. I am on a T10 connection
 > now (or something fast anyway) and it takes about 8 seconds to load.
 > I don't know what the bottleneck is but I want to solve this problem
 > badly! Any help is appreciated!
 >
 > Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting
 > performance? My site database is about 1MB now.

Size of the Database isn't normally important, it's the joins etc that slow
it down.

Anyway the page loads quite slowly for me. Mainly because of the hughe
number of images and complex layout that needs to come down over the wire. I
am on dialup so it took ages for me to download, around 64.13% of home users
in the US connect to the Internet at 56Kbps or less,
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0306/" target="_blank">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0306/</a>

Anyway running your page through the website analyser
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/" target="_blank">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/</a>

gave some interesting statistics.


*Global Statistics*
Total HTTP Requests: 95
Total Size: 155489 bytes

*Object Size Totals*
*Object type | Size (bytes)*
HTML: | 45701
Images: | 90965
Javascript: | 11450
CSS: | 9775
Multimedia: | 0
Other: | 0

Basically your page is too big!

consider optimising your images for a start and choosing appropriate image
formats, for example I just changed one of the big icons to a jpeg and saved
nearly 1.5k on that one image.

Using tables and font tags for visual presentation is weighing down the HTML
size of your page. Consider optimising it further, the textual content of
the page weighs in at 12.39% of the total HTML code size, I am sure you can
see why having nearly 87% of your HTML be presentational is a bad thing!
(used <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.holovaty.com/tools/getcontentsize/" target="_blank">http://www.holovaty.com/tools/getcontentsize/</a> to get this figure)

--
BenM
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/" target="_blank">http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck?? 

Thanks for the great reply. Hopefully I can make sense out of everything you
said!

-brian

"Ben M" <cee.plus RemoveThis @virgin.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:betvrb$v92$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
  > > I am noticing that my site is fairly slow. I am on a T10 connection
  > > now (or something fast anyway) and it takes about 8 seconds to load.
  > > I don't know what the bottleneck is but I want to solve this problem
  > > badly! Any help is appreciated!
  > >
  > > Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting
  > > performance? My site database is about 1MB now.
 >
 > Size of the Database isn't normally important, it's the joins etc that
slow
 > it down.
 >
 > Anyway the page loads quite slowly for me. Mainly because of the hughe
 > number of images and complex layout that needs to come down over the wire.
I
 > am on dialup so it took ages for me to download, around 64.13% of home
users
 > in the US connect to the Internet at 56Kbps or less,
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0306/</font" target="_blank">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0306/</font</a>>
 >
 > Anyway running your page through the website analyser
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/</font" target="_blank">http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/</font</a>>
 >
 > gave some interesting statistics.
 >
 >
 > *Global Statistics*
 > Total HTTP Requests: 95
 > Total Size: 155489 bytes
 >
 > *Object Size Totals*
 > *Object type | Size (bytes)*
 > HTML: | 45701
 > Images: | 90965
 > Javascript: | 11450
 > CSS: | 9775
 > Multimedia: | 0
 > Other: | 0
 >
 > Basically your page is too big!
 >
 > consider optimising your images for a start and choosing appropriate image
 > formats, for example I just changed one of the big icons to a jpeg and
saved
 > nearly 1.5k on that one image.
 >
 > Using tables and font tags for visual presentation is weighing down the
HTML
 > size of your page. Consider optimising it further, the textual content of
 > the page weighs in at 12.39% of the total HTML code size, I am sure you
can
 > see why having nearly 87% of your HTML be presentational is a bad thing!
 > (used <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.holovaty.com/tools/getcontentsize/" target="_blank">http://www.holovaty.com/tools/getcontentsize/</a> to get this figure)
 >
 > --
 > BenM
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/</font" target="_blank">http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/</font</a>>
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck?? 

Thanks for the great tips. I did away with a lot of those images that are
used in the tables. Went from almost 100 HTTP requests down to 29. The total
size was reduced from 160K to 94K. Should I bother optimizing more? These
seem like good numbers and I am already noticing much faster response time.

-brian

"Brian Huether" <brian.huether DeleteThis @dlr.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:05f903eb5f8c12d359556ca523cbecaa@free.teranews.com...
 > I am noticing that my site is fairly slow. I am on a T10 connection now
(or
 > something fast anyway) and it takes about 8 seconds to load. I don't know
 > what the bottleneck is but I want to solve this problem badly! Any help is
 > appreciated!
 >
 > Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting performance?
My
 > site database is about 1MB now.
 >
 > -brian
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.guitar-dreams.com</font" target="_blank">www.guitar-dreams.com</font</a>>
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck?? 

 >
 > "Brian Huether" <brian.huether.RemoveThis@dlr.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
 > news:05f903eb5f8c12d359556ca523cbecaa@free.teranews.com...
  >> I am noticing that my site is fairly slow. I am on a T10 connection
  >> now (or something fast anyway) and it takes about 8 seconds to load.
  >> I don't know what the bottleneck is but I want to solve this problem
  >> badly! Any help is appreciated!
  >>
  >> Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting
  >> performance? My site database is about 1MB now.

<font color=green>  >> <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.guitar-dreams.com</font" target="_blank">www.guitar-dreams.com</font</a>>


 > Thanks for the great tips. I did away with a lot of those images that
 > are used in the tables. Went from almost 100 HTTP requests down to
 > 29. The total size was reduced from 160K to 94K. Should I bother
 > optimizing more? These seem like good numbers and I am already
 > noticing much faster response time.

Personally I would always try and push it lower, around 50k is a good size
for a page imo. However it sounds like you've lowered the size substantially
so in the interests of keeping your time balanced, it might be a good idea
to hold fire for a bit and look at it again a little later down the line.

Without touching the HTMl itself a good next step might be to make your
pages more cacheable and maybe introduce gzip compression to really speed
things up a bit. I presume you are using postnuke for the site (from what I
saw on the first page), I'm not too knowledgeable on how that system works,
it may already do the stuff I'm about to tell you already.

Anyway first of all read this <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/" target="_blank">http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/</a> this is a
useful tutorial on cacheing pages so that they can be retrieved faster and
put less load on your server.

Then figure out how to use gzip compression on your pages, this may be
non-trivial if you so try and figure out whether you have the skills, and
whether your host will let you do it or has the capabilities to do it first.
The following may be of some use to you.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://uk2.php.net/zlib" target="_blank">http://uk2.php.net/zlib</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/23.htm" target="_blank">http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/23.htm</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-gzip/" target="_blank">http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-gzip/</a>

--
BenM
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/" target="_blank">http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck?? 

"Brian Huether" <brian.huether DeleteThis @dlr.de> wrote in message news:<05f903eb5f8c12d359556ca523cbecaa DeleteThis @free.teranews.com>...
 > I am noticing that my site is fairly slow. I am on a T10 connection now (or
 > something fast anyway) and it takes about 8 seconds to load. I don't know
 > what the bottleneck is but I want to solve this problem badly! Any help is
 > appreciated!
 >
 > Also, how do I know when the database size starts affecting performance? My
 > site database is about 1MB now.
 >
 > -brian
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.guitar-dreams.com</font" target="_blank">www.guitar-dreams.com</font</a>>

Hi Brian...

Nice site layout But I agree with most of the folks, it's too big.
I saved the site to local, and it's 156K. For modem/ISDN users, this
is way too large for a quick download. I'd say 20K to 50K is a nice
target. I'm on a T-1, and it took about 8 seconds to load... which is
IMO way too long.

Other slow-downs are the Javascript you run. I checked-out
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.guitar-dreams.com/banners/bannerad3.js" target="_blank">http://www.guitar-dreams.com/banners/bannerad3.js</a> and that's one major
slow-down. Tons of scripting for the browser to parse before the page
loads. You also have tons of rouge Javascript throughout your site.
This needs to execute on the user's browser, which slows the page down
quite a bit.

Finally, you're hitting MANY other sites, so not only does your site
need to load, but pages from other sites need to load due to ads. Ads
are a great way to fund a site, but don't let them be the cause of
lost visitors.

HTH,

Keegan.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why is my site slow? What is the bottleneck??