Speeding up the site
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After testing it with several tools, I noticed that my website was...very slow. Actually, Alexa (first time I ever check this website XD) tells me that 93% of sites are faster. Average loading time is 7 seconds. :/ So I've decided to shrink my pages. It might help others in the same case, so here is what I did:
Use speed tests sites
Alexa's stats are refreshed monthly only, so I needed an other webtool to get my site speed. I recommend Pingdom tools! Information is clear. I liked WebPage Analyzer too, because it has tips to optimize your website speed.
Turning off unused Wordpress plugins
I love Wordpress plugins, but one thing that was annoying me from the start was the codes they generated in wp_head. For example, I use cforms only on my contact page, but it called an 11kb javascript file on all my pages! I've edited the plugin to generate its script only on the contact page using Wordpress' wonderful is_page() function. :) Same for WP-polls and IMP Links (for the resources page).
Shrinking external files
I shrinked my CSS files by removing whitespaces (but now it looks horrible...) using CSS tweak and my javascript files by downloading the compressed version of jQuery and by compressing its plugins with Shrink safe. Don't forget to shrink your plugins javascript files too...
Actually, my javascript files are the culprits (obviously). I shrinked all of them but I still have 63kb of scripts. I removed the fontsizer option, does anybody use it anyway? XD I also want to stop using Adsense, as it really slows down the site, so I'm giving a try to Text Link Ads. Now, I'm just waiting to "sell links" and refer traffic.
Related links
- Thirteen simple rules for speeding up your web site
- Ten ways to speed the download time of your pages
- 5 ways to speed up your site
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4 Responses to “Speeding up the site”
Leave a Comment
Works? Doesn't work? Other tips? Please leave a comment! :)
Thanks for the tips and links !
As for Wordpress plugins, maybe Headspace would be helpful. It allows you to customize every single page of your site. For example, you can add a specific css or javascript file ( or even enable a plugin ) only for one page or category... along with other meta-data related features.
Well, I didn't know about the is_page function () xD...( thanks a lot because I was precisely looking for a way to display some stuff only on the homepage ! )
That's the problem with Wordpress, it offers so many possibilities that... you get lost easily ;__;
( oh and by the way, I don't think many people use the fontsizer option ... as long as they already know the shortcuts to do so XD... But your font size is appropriate, so it shouldn't be a problem anyway ^^
Thanks for the plugin, I'll take a look when I have more plugins to "exclude"! :)
To display things only on the homepage, you should use is_home(); That's what I used for the little "map" box at the top ^^
And that's exactly what I thought too, for the fontsizer, it was just a gadget ;)
Thanks! These tools will come in handy for my upcoming site. :D
Wow... This is awesome Clara! I have to say after reading this, I did it with Enko Blog's website and decreased the load by 48%.