Are You Fast Enough?
After reading Jim’s post today at TheNetFool.com about his new hosting, I decided to do a little research and I promise you that I spent the whole day trying to code an Ajax based excel spreadsheet but it just wouldn’t work with the theme so I had to do what I could with what I had.
Anyway, I ran some speed tests of some popular sites, some websites that I read and some newbie bloggers that I want to give link love to. I figured that this would be a good way to see how you stack up against some of the most popular blogs out there. The idea of this post is also to help you figure out how you can help speed up your load time.
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Blog |
Page Size |
Load Time |
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0.32 KB |
0.29 seconds |
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65.85 KB |
0.46 seconds |
|
|
60.14 KB |
0.46 seconds |
|
|
26.06 KB |
0.59 seconds |
|
|
47.25 KB |
0.59 seconds |
|
|
58.27 KB |
0.6 seconds |
|
|
70.49 KB |
0.64 seconds |
|
|
34.26 KB |
0.72 seconds |
|
|
103.91 KB |
0.74 seconds |
|
|
92.71 KB |
0.76 seconds |
|
|
121.75 KB |
0.84 seconds |
|
|
77.34 KB |
0.88 seconds |
|
|
58.86 KB |
0.9 seconds |
|
|
67.11 KB |
0.98 seconds |
|
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47.55 KB |
1.05 seconds |
|
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54.98 KB |
1.12 seconds |
|
|
42.87 KB |
1.15 seconds |
|
|
43.71 KB |
1.17 seconds |
|
|
36.12 KB |
1.24 seconds |
|
|
114.55 KB |
1.25 seconds |
|
|
76.37 KB |
1.25 seconds |
|
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45.6 KB |
1.48 seconds |
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|
72.91 KB |
1.54 seconds |
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60.73 KB |
1.6 seconds |
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42.84 KB |
1.63 seconds |
|
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70.79 KB |
4.6 seconds |
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46.97 KB |
7.85 seconds |
The Conclusion?
Well the basic diagnosis is the the websites that had more javascripts such as MyBlogLog, Google Analytics or Kontera/Adsense running were a bit slower to load than most. Actually the fastest one to load was Andrea from According to Andrea and although shes a new blogger, the basic idea why her load time was the fastest is because she doesn’t have ads like most of us. That fact itself gives her a major advantage over the rest of us slow pokes.
Lets take another perspective on this. StandOutBlogger has the largest page size and even still he has a great time. The reason why his page size is larger is because he uses quite a bit of graphics in his posts (which I recommend, by the way!) but most importantly he has 10 posts on each page instead of 5 or 8 that most of us have. In addition to that, his posts are quite lengthy and this also causes him to have the largest page size.
Some Tips To Help Reduce Load Time
Here are some ways that you can help reduce your load time not because it makes you look good in a list (such as the excellent one designed by me up above), but mainly because it helps your readers. If your page loads faster, it makes it that much more accessible to your readers. Anyway, here are some quick tips:
Tip # 1 – Optimize Your Images – I have tried to use .gif images on my blog instead of jpg’s to help improve the load time and you can also do that with a simple image editor by simply converting all your images to gif.
Tip # 2 – Reduce The Number Of Posts – The best way to reduce load time is simply cut down on how many posts display on your main page. Keep it at 5 to a maximum of 8 for best results as it will help spread out how many posts you display on a page. Plus, it makes it a lot easier to scroll down a page when it doesn’t require 2 minutes of scrolling.
Tip # 3 – Streamline Your Advertising – This can be done by not overdoing how many 125×125 blocks you have or how many skyscraper ads you have going on at the same time. Keep the ad blocks organized and optimize the images if you need to but most importantly do not over clutter with ads. Less ads may mean not as much money but could mean more readers.
Well, so I hope you liked my post about how you can improve your page load time. Thanks again for checking out the blog and come back tomorrow for another exciting post!
Reminder: I am hosting a contest and giving away an Asus EEE Pc, $50 Rewards Card & Three 2GB USB Pens, so if you haven’t entered yet, please do! Click Here For Details About How You Can Enter!
Thanks for the link, and, wow!, I’m faster than some of the big guys. I’ll have to keep a watch on that though. Still pretty fast though. I don’t know what the recommended max is these days. I know it used to be that the typical user wouldn’t wait more than 8-10 seconds for a site to load, but nowadays I wouldn’t doubt that our attention spans are much shorter!
No worries about the link and yes you are faster than most guys. I think most people wait an average of 4-5 seconds before they move on. Atleast thats what I believe it was two months ago when something like this came up.
Note that converting images from jpg to gif won’t necessarily reduce the size, as it really depends on the jpg quality used, as well as the content of the image.
In some cases, a png image can be smaller (and better looking).
Something else that you didn’t mention that’s worth considering is to reduce the number of separate files downloaded by the page. Some sites reference multiple style sheets, multiple javascript files, etc, and each individual file requires another round trip back to the webserver. Combining these into fewer files (ie, combine multiple style sheets into a single style sheet) can definitely improve the load speed of the website.
Yes, this is true. Converting from jpg to gif can lead to the image quality being deteriorated a bit. Most of the times it does get smaller but if youre converting a large image, then png is the way to go.
Thanks for the additional tip regarding combining style sheets. I wonder how many people actually use more than one style sheet (I’m guessing more than a few atleast) but I try to keep it down to one stylesheet. Most themes that you download actually have between 1-2 stylesheets as well. Good tip Martin! Thanks!
My blog is pretty fast compared to a few others I visit
I ran your blog through the test and you came up at .63 seconds so you’re between the University Kid and Michael Kwan! Thats pretty good!
Thanks for the link and wow, I’m glad I fall where I do on the list. When I first started reading the post, I was concerned with where I was going to end up, but it turns out it’s not too bad and I can be pretty happy with that.
Youre actually faster than a lot of us but its also because your theme’s css is well designed. Its streamlined quite a bit so it loads a lot faster. I’m sure I would be happy if I was under 1 second so youre doing fine in terms of speed!
Excellent post. Looks like I need to do something about this eh.
Hi Syed, I actually ran your blog through the test about 3 times because I found that hard to believe (in terms of where you landed on the list) and that was the best time but then again both you and I come up on the list where we do because of graphics and use of images on the blog! Either way, thats still a really good time though.
I’ve always been in favor of simple designs and my page loads in 0.54 seconds according to the iWebTool and I think that’s plenty fast enough. I’m using Hostgator just like theNetFool.
Thats a great host and your time is pretty good but I think as long as youre under 3-4 seconds you’re doing fine. I think the reason why some of us are higher up is because of the number of ads we have and graphics we use but .54 is a great time!
Cool list buddy, thanks for the link. Good to see TUK takes pretty little time to load compared to the rest
No problem at all. You did pretty good with the time!
Damn! My blog has some serious problem. I need to check performance of all the Wordpress plugins I am using for this blog.
The page size seems to be in limit but the time – Can’t believe!
I was a bit surprised that it was that high. I ran two more speed tests on it on separate occasions and it was over 6 seconds on both tries. Maybe its the server since there aren’t that many posts on your page and its not that graphic heavy either.
Enkay, I did something wrong it seems. But my blog theme is messed up now.
I enabled the wp-super-cache theme, it told me my wp-content folder is writable and it should be set properly. I set chmod to 644. But the blog could not reload, so I set it back to 755
And the themes in my wp-content/themes folder disappeared leaving my blog set to default theme
No problem. I just got your email as I was leaving and I came back to see it. I’ll be online in 5 minutes to help you figure it out!
Thanks Enkay for being there for help! The blog is backup to normal.
By the way, I removed Kontera – and it takes 0.55 seconds to load the blog now
– putting me above dailyblogtips.com
You definitely fixed it! Removing Kontera put you at .6 seconds (average) from 3 speed tests that I did. Thats a dramatic improvement.
Wow. Mine is big. I might have to cut the amount of posts on the main page down or even start using excerpts.
Tom, I think your page size is big for a good reason and thats because your posts are so very detailed and informative. The way you can make that page size in half is by putting 5 posts to a page because it will also make scrolling easier. Other than that, I’m sure you’ll be fine in terms of how quick it loads.
I will try and cut it back to about 5 then. And see how that improves things.
Thanks for the info!
No problem Tom. Let me know when you have it cut down so that I can check up on it again to see the results.
thanks for the link love and thanks for the tips! I am always looking for tips and ideas for my blog since i am new to it.
Ive often thought about using adsense with my blog but i sorta like how clean my blog looks. I guess there is pros and cons to using ads and whatnot.
(btw, I was like, Oh no! I am first on the list. wtf did i do now?) :p
haha! Youre welcome for the link! I wasn’t too surprised to see you #1 on the list because your blog always loads really fast for me. Congrats!
Adsense does have its positives and negatives and most of us use it because its what we like to call “passive income”. Either way, if yours is just a family blog then adsense may not be what youre looking for but most of us are..well..just.. greedy I think..haha
well i was concerned about how fast mine is because i use .mac to host my website and use iWeb08 to create it. and if you are as much of an apple freak like I am, you know that .mac has “upgraded” to a newer and better version called MobileMe. And ever since the upgrade, my iweb cant publish correctly to MobileMe or just lil things here and there dont add up. I cant even make an entry! ahhh!!! But do not worry, I am working with Apple right now to resolve the issue.
I think there’s one very important aspect of speed testing that appears to have been missed so far….
It depends a lot on where the blog is hosted, and where the speed test is being done from.
For example, I have some websites hosted in Australia, and others hosted in the US. From my location in Australia, the Aussie-hosted sites are faster, but for anyone in the US, the US-hosted sites are probably faster (and http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test, being located in the US, reports that my US-hosted sites are faster than my Aussie-hosted sites.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was actually discussing this with someone today as the location of servers does make a difference. I think Iwebtool.com checks from different locations though because when I had emailed them they told me its an average of results from different locations so thats why I used them. Thanks for that observation as I was also talking to someone about that today.
There is one more observation,
The domain name with or without “www” also makes difference it seems.
http://www.lifeiscolourful.com 49.42 KB 0.53 seconds
lifeiscolourful.com 49.42 KB 3.58 seconds
Check this out. Yesterday, when I said I made it 0.55, I had checked with “www” too and found the time was 8+ seconds. [I did not comment, or it would have looked like comment spam]
The difference is because lifeiscolourful.com is doing a 302 redirect to http://www.lifeiscolourful.com.
As a result, the speed test for lifeiscolourful.com is grabbing the (tiny) 302 redirect, and then has to do another connection to http://www.lifeiscolourful.com.
This means the speed test is having to do an extra connection to the webserver, so the time for lifeiscolourful.com is longer than that for http://www.lifeiscolourful.com.
(I prefer URLs without the leading www – all my websites are class B no-www compliant).
That is true. I entered all the domains for the speedtest with a www in front of them for this reason however when I usually type a domain into the browser I dont enter the www.
fyi, i got my problem fixed with my publishing. so yay!
Thats great! I’m glad its fixed. I’m not really a Mac user so I wasn’t too sure about how to assist you with that so im glad you got it fixed!
Awesome post, thanks for thinking about my article and posting a response of sorts. This is an awesome analysis and I may be featuring you in my weekly link run-down for your efforts.
Keep up the great posts, I’ve checked out some of your old stuff and really like what you are doing here (subscribed to rss!). Good to see I’m not at the back of the list anymore, though I’m still a bit puzzled why John Chow hasn’t sped things up.
Thanks for the comment Jim and I’d appreciate the weekly mention. Your blog did speed up as I had come the night before and saw the image that you were under construction. I think the reason why John hasn’t sped things up is because hes really not losing any readers or income by attempting to reduce ads or images so it really doesnt affect him at this stage.
I’m actually a little surprised that I’m near the top, since I tend to run at least one image with every post (sometimes several), not to mention YouTube embedding and ad code.
I wasn’t too surprised because when I looked at your blogs, you stay away from lots of ads and javascript so thats what really helps you even with the videos and images so thats a good thing!
Great list and an interesting look at how my blog compares to a handful that I read regularly. Recently I noticed that a widget in my sidebar was really slowing load times down and I removed that, although there are still others that could probably be removed to improve the speed even a little more.
Thanks Derek. I realized that on Friday/Saturday, the Alexa widget was acting up and causing the page to load slow however that has been fixed now so that could have been the issue then.
I would also recommend this online free tool: http://Site-Perf.com/.
It measure loading speed of page and it’s requisites (images/js/css) like browsers do and shows nice detailed chart – so you can easily spot bottlenecks.
Also very useful thing is that this tool is able to verify network quality of your server (packet loss level and ping delays).
My new blog has a speed of 4.89 seconds and the page size is 55.88 KB.
I think I’ll have work on it to make it load much faster.