[Pro] Website/Webpage Speed Test?

Freeway
1

What web page performance tools do you guys use to optimize your web pages? I just found this one tonight, which looks pretty good: Website Speed Test | Pingdom Tools

Also, how big is too big?

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2

I always test my sites with Google PageSpeed as part of SEO, as Google now takes speed into account. It gives some good suggestions.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

The biggest thing with freeway sites is to leverage browser caching. Here is a good tutorial:
http://fortheloveofseo.com/blog/performance/leverage-browser-caching-how-to-add-expires-headers/

I also always optimize all of the images that Freeway outputs with ImageOptim.

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3

Thanks Caleb. Do you use Photoshop for editing and outputting your images first, then Image Optimizer?

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4

No, I use Freeway and Sketch to create the graphics. I just process all the images that Freeway publishes. This is the reason why I use a common resource folder and publish locally, then upload to the server using Yummy FTP. Automator streamlines this workflow for me.

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5

Caleb,
I found your post as I am searching for ways to speed up my first freeway website. I am a newbie. I read the tutorial on leverage browser caching. How do you add Expires header to your images in freeway? Could you please be specific. Thank you for considering answering
Peggy

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6

Peggy,
First, look on your server to see if there is a .htaccess file at the root (the public_html folder). Because it has a period at the beginning of its name, it won’t show up unless you can see hidden files. Any FTP program should have this option.

If there is the .htaccess file, open it in a text editor and add this code to it, tweaking it fit your needs:

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”

ExpiresDefault “access 2 days”

---- If there isn't a .htaccess file, you'll need to create one. Simply paste that code into a text editor and save as htaccess, without the period at the beginning. Upload it to your server and THEN rename it to **.**htaccess.

If you want more information, see Leverage browser caching: How to add Expires headers | For the love of SEO

That should work!

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7

I found your post as I am searching for ways to speed up my first freeway website.

Please note Peggy that this will make no difference to first time visitors to your site.

If your pages are image heavy then there are other things you should be doing first because if your site is slow to load on an initial visit then the viewer may not bother coming back.

This is really of benefit to repeat visitors avoiding repeated downloads of images etc. already held in cache.

Post a link to your pages/site and we can have a look and suggest ways of speeding it up - has Google PageSpeed suggested it needs attention?

David

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8

Can I also suggest that if you are still developing a site then this is not a good idea - especially with expires by times of up to a year.

If you are still working on a site and changing things then you are not going to see those changes reflected in your browser view.

Best left until your site is stable - unless you reduce your expires by times considerably.

D

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9

Dave and Caleb,
Thanks for your replys! I am very much code illiterate! I am frustrated with the speed of my first site. www.bbcustompdrtools.com I have reduced the images to the bare minimum. I’m wondering if the rounded corners on all the boxes is slowing it down. It comes right up in the preview. I am hosting with MacHighway. Any help will be much appreciated. I am anxious to learn.
Thank you so much
Peggy
(Noticed you had a 27in iMac. Thinking of getting the new one)

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10

Peggy,

I might have found you issue. The background image you use is gigantic, weighing in at 98kb. I suggest you crop it to something as small as possible that you can tile nicely. I did a fairly large crop (345x309px) and ran it through ImageOptim. The result was 19kb, a pretty large drop!

If you run all the images that Freeway uploads/publishes through ImageOptim, you usually save about 20% in overall file size as well.

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11

Hi Peggy,
Firstly well done on getting your first site up and running.

Someone once told me that web sites never get finished they just bet abandoned. As such you’ll always find things to improve on a site but you’ve made a great first step in getting this up and live.

In terms of the site’s speed it doesn’t appear to be too slow for me but then I’m using a fairly fast cable connection. There are several things that I’d suggest you look at to speed the site up (in no particular order);

  • If you look in the Resources folder for the site (http://www.bbcustompdrtools.com/Resources/) you can see of the images that Freeway has created based on your design. Some of these have been sliced up into multiple images and others look similar but are slightly different (the navigation buttons for example). See if you can cut the number of images used down a bit by using pass-though images or layered items. Each request for an image will slow the page down a tiny fraction as the browser has to go off and locate the image.
  • Consider moving the navigation buttons over from images to using the CSS Menus Action. The quality of the buttons will be better, they will be small in file size and should look consistent across the whole site. Have a look at the sample CSS Menus I’ve created and posted on FreewayStyle.com (see link in footer). Feel free to download these, pull them apart or simply copy and paste them into your pages to use them as a starting point for your own designs.
  • As Caleb mentioned compressing your images will help.
  • You may want to consider dropping the rounded corners and shadows on the panels in favour of using the CSS3 Corners (CSS3 Corners - ActionsForge) and CSS3 Shadow (CSS3 Shadow - ActionsForge) Actions. Not everyone will see them but then visitors using older browsers won’t know what they are missing. It will also cut down a lot of those sliced images.

All the best,
Tim.

On 29 Nov 2012, at 12:29, Peggy Lawing wrote:

I am frustrated with the speed of my first site. www.bbcustompdrtools.com I have reduced the images to the bare minimum. I’m wondering if the rounded corners on all the boxes is slowing it down.

FreewayStyle.com - Free Freeway templates and parts to download, use and explore - http://www.freewaystyle.com

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12

Hey Guys,
Looks like I got some work to do! Thanks so much for the lesson, I will post my “improvements” I’m sure I will have more questions.
You guys are great!
Peggy

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13

AWESOME INFO HERE!!! can i have your opinions on my website? www.rusticfurnitureoutlet.ca

someone wrote this about freeway (IS IT TRUE??) “using a program like Freeway often adds bloated and ungainly code - this makes it difficult for the search engines to properly parse the site, and will result in lower rankings.”
Is this person telling me this just because they want to bill me a 7000$ to redo my website??

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14

Freeway can write pretty clean or bloated code, it really comes down in large part to how the user approaches it. There are people here that can bend FW to their will and get some very nicely semantic code out of it, but if you leave FW to its own devices and just point-n-click without paying attention then you can end up with code soup.

It’s all about the user, baby.

Todd
https://xiiro.com

someone wrote this about freeway (IS IT TRUE??) “using a program like Freeway often adds bloated and ungainly code - this makes it difficult for the search engines to properly parse the site, and will result in lower rankings.”
Is this person telling me this just because they want to bill me a 7000$ to redo my website??

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15

ok makes sense… is it easy to fix? i am not a super crazy connaisseur but any help would be amazing!!!
the website is:www.rusticfurnitureoutlet.ca

also i added the code:

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”

ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”

ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”

ExpiresDefault “access 2 days”

to the HTACCESS file which basically stopped my website from working… it is just a copy paste deal? what else is needed in this file to make google happy?

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16

How long is a piece of string? I can’t say how easy or hard it would be, it’s very subjective.

I can say that you need to have an idea of what clean semantic code is and is not and you need to understand what your end goal is. You also need to be relentlessly diligent and pay attention to how you build the site.

Then you need to understand how FW outputs code when you perform a particular function and then find a way to get it to output the code the way you want it to. This part takes time and experience. If you are completely in the dark about code (or FW) then the learning curve will feel like a near vertical line, but it is absolutely possible to accomplish.

Todd
https://xiiro.com

ok makes sense… is it easy to fix?

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17

Ok todd, makes sense… where can i find the help to get me up this step curve? Can you look at the site and let me know if its CRAP and i am better off restarting from zero? or go to the dreaded word press?

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18

As far as I know there’s no single answer to your question but there are no doubt many threads on FWT that cover the topic. Perhaps one of the people I referred to can step in. I no longer use FW so I can’t offer much in the way of a precise step-by-step answer.

The code base is not crap. I would start by moving the CSS into a separate stylesheet (FW Preference setting) and getting rid of the inline styles (there are Actions for this). Beyond that there are various structural and semantic changes that could be improved upon also, but it’s all very fixable.

Unless you need the ease and functionality of WP there’s probably no need to go that route unless you want to.

Todd
https://xiiro.com

Ok todd, makes sense… where can i find the help to get me up this step curve? Can you look at the site and let me know if its CRAP and i am better off restarting from zero? or go to the dreaded word press?

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