Is Your Site Fast Enough?

So it’s been around ten days since the new theme and adding the new vanilla forum.  Something that I’ve noticed about the site even before the re design was the slow load time. So what have I’ve done to help speed things up more?

  • Limited the number of posts from 10 to 7.
  • I stopped running Kontera ads - 
  • (92,546 impressions 563 clicks - $34.12) horrible return. 
  • Disabled all plugins that are not in use anymore.
  • Got rid of some widgets - sorry (Mybloglog)
  • Hosting all images locally
  • Started using PHP redirects.
  • Got rid of unnecessary javascript.

I used iWebtool website loading time and speed checker to find out exactly how fast my site was loading. The results after changing the above shaved off an additional 20 seconds. The load time and load speed of a website is extremely important for visitors and the overall browsing experience.

In 1997, Peter Bickford’s landmark paper, “Worth the Wait?,” reported research in which half the users abandoned Web pages after a wait of 8.5 seconds. Bickford’s paper was quoted whenever Web site performance was discussed, and the “8-second rule” soon took on a life of its own as a universal rule of Web site design.

JakelDaily.com (blogtips) - 43.81KB 9.91 seconds 0.22 seconds per kb
JakelDaily.com (celebrity) -114.23KB 6.27 seconds 0.05 seconds per kb
Google.com - 5.05KB 6.28 seconds 1.24 seconds per kb
JohnChow.com - 60.75KB 9.38 seconds 0.15 seconds per kb
NateWhitehill.com - 63.81KB 19.64 seconds 0.31 seconds per kb
Problogger.com - 52.41KB 40.91 seconds 0.78 seconds per kb

The iWebtool returns the load time of the websites (up to 10) in seconds and the average speed per KB this crucial data to insure the optimization of your site. To use this tool sign up at iWebtool it’s free and they also have a link exchange program. After you’ve signed up just click Webtools and the tool is listed under domain checkups - website speed test. They also have over 50 other services that are excellent for getting you site up to par.

September 24, 2007 | posted in Talk 

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10 Responses to “Is Your Site Fast Enough?”

  1. Scottsdale Realtor on September 25th, 2007

    Thanks for the tools. I agree that load time is key. I know for myself if a site takes more than a couple of seconds to load, I’m outta there. I’ve heard that rack space servers are one of the fastest around. I don’t know though. I’m a newbie. Your site loaded quick for me though.

  2. DeMerchant on September 27th, 2007

    Did you consider tossing widgets (like mybloglog or BlogRush blogrush.com/r8092438) at the bottom of your page? tyour page might still take longer but it wont delay the content that way at least

  3. Life is Colourful on October 2nd, 2007

    I second about Kontera thing. It’s just not working out for me as well, and I think it hogs a lot of resources on my website. I would need to run a check as you mentioned, and see what all I can get rid of.

  4. Court on October 3rd, 2007

    I ditched Kontera on one of my sites, too. At first, I did really well with it. After a month or two, people stopped clicking. It’s still working ok on some of my sites though. I still use it on the site I put in the URL and it’s working there.

  5. HiFi Guy on October 6th, 2007

    I don’t think it’s good for SEO to reduce the number of post shown on each page, i prefer to leave by default 10 posts per page

  6. Mike C on October 14th, 2007

    Is there an SEO benefit to your website loading faster? Such as getting more pages indexed by the search engines because they crawl deeper.

  7. Mike C on October 17th, 2007

    Your welcome for the comment. Consider checking out my site some time it has only been live for a couple weeks.

  8. John Kain on October 18th, 2007

    I don’t think it matters if your server connection speed is a bit slower for search engine to index your site properly.

  9. Yourbookmark on December 1st, 2007

    I agree with John Kain, there isn’t nothig related to your website speed to search engine indexing.

  10. Work From Home Jobs on August 27th, 2008

    Kontera is a hard one for me to figure out whether to keep. It doesn’t make much but on some of my niche sites I’m not sure whether it is slowing things down and actually costing me money or not.

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