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Resolved Question

Low Page Speed Score

Jan 3, 2013 6:17AM PST

Hi,

So I am in the process of building a website for the first time and I feel like a have a pretty good handle on Dreamweaver for only working with it about a month or two. I just don't know any of the shortcuts or how to optimize. But I ran FireBug on my webpage and the score I am receiving is anywhere from 50/100 to 65/100.

I receive two Red Bullets = Leverage Browser Caching and Enable Compression.

Two Yellow Triangles (sometimes 3) = Combine Images into CSS Sprites and Optimize Images. (Inline Small JavaScript)(doesn't show on home page)

This seems way to low for this simple website. The size of the pages are from 10KB to 22KB which 22KB is one of my picture archive. This site is supposed to be mostly pictures with little text.

I have been shrinking my original pictures which are used as hyperlinks to thumbnails to view full size. But the images were 4000 x 3000 so I am shrinking to 1200 x 900 which still is giving me a 300KB image. Is this too big still?

I guess what I am asking is what can I do to make my site more efficient and run better? Shrink Images more, Compress Images (GZip), Clean Up Code/CSS, etc? Also I am wondering what exactly FireBug is telling me to do to fix the website?

Obviously the website is not finished since you won't be able to read hardly any of the text! But I feel this could be a major issue and don't want to move much further ahead until its cleared up.

http://www.msifab.com

Don't be too harsh ha!

Thank you in advance,
Ryan

Discussion is locked

rltegantvoort has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Page loaded in a few seconds here.
Jan 3, 2013 6:20AM PST

Sorry, what's the concern again?

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I know
Jan 4, 2013 12:35AM PST

Yes, I know the page loads right away. I was just concerned about the score it just seemed low but according to Sovereign 65 is not a bad score. I just wanted to make the site run smoothly and the main concern I was having was on the archive pages there are lots of pictures and when I select one to enlarge it takes awhile for the picture to load. But I am in the process of shrinking the images from 2-3MB to 300-500KB. The Resolution is 300 should I be using 72? Is 500KB still too large? Also I was just concerned about the flags Firebug was giving me and hoping I could make the site even better. Should I compress the images?

Thanks for you response.

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I would not.
Jan 4, 2013 12:58AM PST

If the page loads fast, unless you are trying to support DIAL UP, no change.

At the office they lost (fired) a web person over their lack of production. They were overly concerned about things like this.
Bob

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Exactly What I Wanted To Hear
Jan 4, 2013 3:17AM PST

This is my first website so I don't exactly know what is acceptable but I would say its fine then. Awesome thanks for helping me out

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Good to read that.
Jan 4, 2013 3:25AM PST

I predict you will survive a long time. I hope I didn't offend you at any time but once in a while folk get fixated on such things and it can hurt.
Bob

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Thank you
Jan 4, 2013 5:17AM PST

Nope that is exactly what I needed to hear and now i can move on and finish the site.

I do have one question for you still: What did you think of the site? Was it easy to navigate?

I think I have an eye for stuff like this but its always nice to have another opinion since it is my first site.

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Answer
I'm guessing you
Jan 3, 2013 2:39PM PST

used PageSpeed in Firebug that told you all this? https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

All the things you mentioned, yes, they can have an impact and can make the site more responsive. I would in particular take a closer look at compression and optimizing the images. The link above provides details on how to do that.

65 is not that bad of a score. I'd say that anything between 65-80 is about average.

~Sovereign

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Thank you
Jan 4, 2013 12:56AM PST

I have viewed that webpage already and found it more confusing than anything. I didn't think 50-65 would be a good score but if its not bad than I am okay with that. I know the page loads quickly I was just concerned about the flags PageSpeed gave me and wondering if I could make it better is all.

Are there any webpages that have 100 scores? Just wondering I guess

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I'm sure there
Jan 7, 2013 10:31PM PST

are websites get pretty close, but they might have little to no content. In other words, if you have a site that doesn't do anything, then chances are it will load faster, but if you are using your website and you supply it with lots of content, there's always something that can be done to make it faster, it just comes down to what is practical.

~Sovereign