Slow page loading

Crafty-Ones · #1 (**permalink**) 08-21-2003, 02:44 PM

I'm not sure if this is where I even need to post this. But I am at a loss here and have been banging my head for 3 months now.
My site (http://craftyones.net) has the most unbelievable slow loading pages. I am losing members and customers over this timing of it. I rank in the 14% for speed on Alexa. some people have timed 12 min load times on dial up.

We just switched over to this server (tpchost) and uploaded our site onto monster commerce software. We have 2 java applets on the front page, 1 is in the top section shown on every page. But the speed issue is on every single page on our site, even ones with out the javas, and on the software system side as well.
I've been told by one group it's the graphics that are killing me (even though pages w/out grpahics load slow like the chat boards) We resized them, ran them through optimizers and lowered the number of products (pictures) per page. I've tried reducing and streamlingin the code, but nothing.
then I'm told it's the server and they need to upgrade their hardware. (of course my server doesn't like this answer) but other sites hosted with this server don't have the same load time.
We've removed the javas, and no changes. We've ran tracers from the pc's expereincing the worst and the bottleneck is coming from where the isp meets the server. each though blame the other for the bottleneck. Plus that we have multiple isp's suffering the same bottleneck.

so my question is, what can I do to find out where the problems lies. We are a retail store and Christmas rush is coming, I need to make sure this is corrected by then. any help would be warming welcomed and geatly appreciated.

Tami

ivr · #2 (**permalink**) 08-21-2003, 07:26 PM

I would think its the applets that are causing you the worry, they are nice but took ages to load, what about making them in flash or swish I am sure the file size would come way down and load as you want the page to do or,
Better to have the page load fast than have pretty pictures? so remove them entirely

httpman · #3 (**permalink**) 08-21-2003, 09:28 PM

The size (KB) of the pictures are OK (on your homepage at least, I did not check further), but the applets are a nightmare.

Not the applets by themselves, the code loads quickly, but the quantity of pictures that they load before starting to display. Especially the banner applet, of course. It takes a very high amount of the bandwidth, therefore all other parts of the page are very long to download.

The worst with this top banners applet : each time the visitor switch to another page of your site, it starts again downloading each picture of the banner, w/o taking advantage of the cache system.

Remove those 2 applets, your site should show a great acceleration.

You also load 2 javascript (codea.js and ss.webring.com/navbar). They are small (<3KB for both) but they could eat some power ?

last : your pages are written in ASP, it can maybe eat a lot of the power of the server.

As a test you should try tu run a page :
1- without java applet
2- without your 2 javascript
3- as a standard HTML page

This page should go at the right speed...

JP

davebarnes · #4 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 12:35 PM

I use Opera 7.11 as my browser.
It told me that the page was only 240KB. So, it should have loaded quickly.
It did not because it was trying to reach a site called www.freeinvisiblecounters.com.

I tried to surf directly to this site and could not reach it.

Drop the FREE crap and pay for a counter that does not delay your page.

,dave

ojo4max · #5 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 12:41 PM

I agree with JP. I would remove the applets, or at least delete some of the parameters, especially since they have a _blank value. You can also compress the pictures, although they are not too big right now. The page also seems to be hanging on a php script which looks like a counter. You may want to look into that. Also try to constrain the width of the site to 755 pixels. I have to scroll left to right on my screen.

LauraB · #6 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 01:06 PM

Your site loaded very quickly!?! Did you change somthing? Am I missing something? We are on wireless here at the office, which is not available at home. I will try it on the dial-up modem at home tonight (if I can remember...)

Lando · #7 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 01:50 PM

I just tried your site (Fri. 12:30 Central), I'm on DSL and it took about 15 seconds for anything to show, but considering the congestion lately, not that bad for time.

I looked at your source code and you have a TON of white space that you could get rid of, in other words, optimize the page by getting rid of a lot of the blank spots/spaces. There are 'HTML page optimizers' out there that do that for you.

I have crunched mine, sometimes by hand, to where I've actually cut in half the file size. Not saying this is the answer to ALL your probs (looks like the comments made above are probably more to blame) but it definitely will help in download speed.

Good luck!
Lando

rdgreenlaw · #8 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 03:31 PM

I think your java applets are nice, but they take up a lot of the load time... Could you convert the images in the second applet to an animated .gif image and have it directed to a page that shows the images for each product so the shopper who sees something there that he/she is really interested in can click to go to the page, then show the images on that page? That would speed up the homepage load, and the potential customer might not be too upset about the download speed on the next page. For the page it jumps to, create 2 images for each product featured. Image 1 is a low density image, Image 2 is a higher quality image that could load automatically after image 1 (or when the viewer clicks on the first image) This would make the page load much faster. For the banner, maybe you could select a client ad to display at random, and select another random ad when the customer reloads the page or changes to a new page. I'm not sure how this can be done, but I have seen it on some web pages.

Hope these suggestions help!

swstyles · #9 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 04:01 PM

Great Responses above!!!
I noticed that your HTML FILE size is 81k. That is HUGE!!!! I noticed a lot of tabbing going on. You should run an html cleaner through your code. That might cut down the load time. Also make sure your html is formatted properly. If the browser has to make decisions on rendering your html code, sometimes that causes a page to load slower.

I am on a T1 connection running a P4 3.04 ghz and it didn't take long to load but Cleaner html should fix some of your problems.

Nice site by the way.

Kingsley · #10 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 05:51 PM

Hello Tami,

The site loaded ok for me but then I'm on a fast connection. I think that some of the images on the home page are way too large, for instance the craftyaward image is around 21 Kb this can be reduced by half easily. See here

This is only 12Kb done quickly.

Hope this helps along with the other comments above.

Regards

Kingsley

The Professor · #11 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 06:10 PM

Sorry but this page or rather web site has violated almost every guide line in page design. The first page should be simple and short. Horizontal scrolling is almost unforgiveable in this type of design and the vertical scrolling is in excess of what it should be. There are too many banners on the page and the code needs cleaning up. There is nothing wrong with using applets or asp or jave structures in a page but the page must be visible by itself. I wouldnt blame the server. Look for a good professional web designer. The solution is to start over again.

The Professor · #12 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 06:11 PM

Sorry but this page or rather web site has violated almost every guide line in page design. The first page should be simple and short. Horizontal scrolling is almost unforgiveable in this type of design and the vertical scrolling is in excess of what it should be. There are too many banners on the page and the code needs cleaning up. There is nothing wrong with using applets or asp or jave structures in a page but the page must be visible by itself. I wouldnt blame the server. Look for a good professional web designer. The solution is to start over again.

rocky1 · #13 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 06:40 PM

Have to agree with the Doc, to many images, to many animations. I count 9 total between banners, applets, and animated gifs.

Index page should be short and sweet. It should scream load speed! Get them on the site and, then take them to a home page. You're loading to much to one page, spread it over a couple of pages.

Lose the slideshow, run thumbnails instead if you're looking for speed on dial up. It's nifty but you'll sell more if they stay on your page.

SyrenSong · #14 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 06:57 PM

Hi Crafty-Ones.

Looks like you've got several problems going on here, not just one.

First of all, as swstyles mentioned, your index page is almost 82k and that's HUGE! Not only that, but that's strictly your code and doesn't include any graphics on your page.

You can cut down a bit on that size by:

Removing all the spaces between tables and cells;
Placing your styles in a separate style sheet, rather than in the body of each html page; and
Removing your two javascript codes and placing them in external files.

You've also got a java applet running that's calling a whole lot of image files from a wide variety of other servers. Each image has to be loaded separately, after the browser contacts each website in turn. Again, that's going to slow evreything down. Each of these servers has a different speed, so the effect is going to multiply to cause a slow-down in download times. This problem is going to be true of both your java applets.

Then there's the problem of the java applets themselves. They take up processor time. This can make the pages "appear" to download slowly on computers with slower CPUs. It can also cause everything on various computers to run more slowly because of the applets taking up more than their fair share of computer memory.

Then there's the graphics on your page. I found an animated gif of a ribbon (America United) that's almost 28k. In addition to that, you've got more than 100k+ of graphics on your site. That's not good.

The average page shouldn't be more than around 40-80k. More than that, you risk losing your visitors before the page fully loads. They won't even see what you've got to offer.

You may want to re-think a few things on your site and how they're done. These aren't difficult problems to fix, but it's going to take a bit of time to get it all sorted out.

HTH!
Syren

Crafty-Ones · #15 (**permalink**) 08-22-2003, 08:15 PM

You guys are great! I do so much appreciate the repsonses! Just a preface - I am a CPA in practice that started this web site last year to fill in the down time during tax season. The site has been more successful than I imagined and I am now working round the clock to keep this going in the right direction. This system we are on is our 3rd system. The first was a basic html page with an "e-mail me to place an order", when then moved to a shopping cart system that we outgrew within 6 months.
I have had a crash course learning all of this in the past year, and enjoyable as it has been, it's a whole new world. I just keep trying to improve on what we have and keep the numbers growing in the upwards direction!

So I don't claim by any means to consider myself a web tech, just trying to keep up with something that's growing faster than me. :)

1st of all our tech ran some speed tests with all the sites that are on my shared server (only 60) and they all came up slow. So he contacted the server and we are getting new hardware and upgardes on Monday.

As far as all the suggestions, I will work on each one of them, however, we are limited somewhat because we us the monster commerce software, which autogenerates most parts of the pages.

Believe it or not, I have been removing a LOT of what we HAD on the front page, but agree with everything that was said here. Each week, I try to thin out the page (avoiding the vertical scrolling) and clean the html (for the body part I can control)

So the java scripts are going to have to go... a couple of you suggested using thumbnails. I can ask my graphic artist if she can do this, but if you use thumbnails that rotate, can you link them to the correct pages? I'm not sure she can do that, which is why we set up the java script.

The rotating banner we've had for a while, I have been trying to find an affordable cgi rotating script, but everyone I have tried won't work on the asp system. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good cgi script? I don't mind paying for one as long as I know it will work.

I will also run more of the images on the front page through the optimizer and see if we can get them smaller.

Most of the problems is on dial up connections, I have cable and things load good for me as well. But most of our members don't and are screaming at me. On Friday, I dialed up just to see for myself and got sick at the load time.

What is an html cleaner and can it be used on an asp page?

Any suggestions for a good tracker? We have one that comes with our software, but I can't understand it and it doesn't give me the reports I am looking for. It shows everything in requests and I would rather track pages hit and visitor information.

I realize that to have the site run smoother we need to minimize the grpahics, but being a craft retail site the graphics are required.

Thanks so much again! Back to the drawing board to see what I can fix, and what I need to learn! :)

tsindos · #16 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 03:47 AM

Hello Crafty ones.
You must have by now done something right. I just saw you post (and its replies) and went to view your page. It took three seconds.
Maybe now you should give us a few tips on how you did it.

SyrenSong · #17 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tsindos

Hello Crafty ones.
You must have by now done something right. I just saw you post (and its replies) and went to view your page. It took three seconds.
Maybe now you should give us a few tips on how you did it.

Uh, are you connected via T1 or something? Nothing's changed that I can see on their site.

S

Lando · #18 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 04:03 PM

All that is, is a program that crunches all the code together. Since HTML uses brackest<> to determine what and where an object or text will be and show up, there is no need for white spaces as you would on typing a paper.

Here is an example. The code below is not optimized...

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="180" valign="top">

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#00a6ad">
<tr>
<td colspan="2" height="12" bgcolor="#ffffff"><spacer type="block" width="1"></td>
</tr>

<tr valign="top">

<td>

This is HTML optimized, at least somewhat.....

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="180" valign="top"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#00a6ad"><tr><td colspan="2" height="12" bgcolor="#ffffff"><spacer type="block" width="1"></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="180" valign="top"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#00a6ad"><tr><td colspan="2" height="12" bgcolor="#ffffff"><spacer type="block" width="1"></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td>

The purpose of spacing is for easy reading of the code, so I'd suggest keeping a non-optimized one around, cause it gets a lil' difficult trying to debug a code all mashed together! The difference above, as small as it is, is 3.42 kb vs 2.98 kb, almost 1/2 kb and thst just a very tiny html code example.

Hope that answers your question about HTML cleaning/optimization a little.
Lando

pcwebdesign · #19 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 07:04 PM

You could try taking the style sheet out and putting it into an external style sheet. This may help.

wenwilder · #20 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 07:42 PM

http://www.w3c.org/People/Raggett/tidy/ <---HTML Tidy
http://ww.pcbit.com/htmlopt/ <---HTML Optimizer

These should help with cleaning up your coding. It may not solve your problem, but it can't hurt.

nevboyle · #21 (**permalink**) 08-23-2003, 08:39 PM

Just tested it.

It took 25 seconds before any image or words showed on screen. Using WinXP with plenty of speed ram etc., dial up modem. It got up to about 60 seconds before all the applet pictue boxes were full.

Normally I would have clicked away from the site if nothing showed between 10 and 20 seconds, depends how badly I wanted to go there.

An addition to the comments above www.htmlvalidator.com/ shows several html problems, worth a look.

Regards
Nev.

Crafty-Ones · #22 (**permalink**) 08-26-2003, 12:04 PM

thanks again for the feedback. Yesterday our servers were updated and more Ram was installed so it isn't as overloaded. If anyone wouldn't mind telling me if it's any faster on their system ( esp dial up users)

We are looking into the html cleaner, thanks so much. The only thing we have a problem with is that we are on a software program, that gener