Why is My Website Loading Slow ? Analyze & Make Website, Blog Faster

Guest Post by Girish Mony.

"Slow and steady wins the race". This is a very ancient proverb.  Though this is a very good one, you cannot apply this to your website’s loading speed because, We are in a world running faster than ever and impatience becomes the norm. 

If in this world you are creating a site like blogs or others which loads too slowly, you are sure to lose a lot of traffic or if you are a developer then there are chances that your client gets unhappy with the site performance and more possibly he/she may switch you.

Tip : Schedule Automatic Downloads in Firefox

Find out What Makes your Website Slow with Yslow

In the above cases, is there a way or solution to solve the problem?.  Yes, How ? Through Yslow Firefox add-on. This is one of the official add-on produced by Yahoo inc. You should install Firebug to use this add on.

How Yslow Add-on Helps You ?

This Firefox add on ranks the site you are viewing with grades starting from ‘A’ based upon the parameters which affects the site performance.  We can see the parameters which is important to consider when creating the site below.  Some parameters are not easy for small site owners like Bloggers and only possible for huge enterprise site owners, but you can try to follow the parameters whatever possible in your site. The main purpose of this add on is to increase the site performance by reducing the site loading speed.

Though all the 34 parameters cannot be explained in the single post, I will cover the basic suggestions in this post.  Some of the basic parameters suggested by Yahoo are

1. Put StyleSheets at the Top: When stylesheets are placed at the head of the document, page loads faster than when placed at the other parts of the page. All the contents of the page loads in a sequential manner.  This much improves the user experience.
2. Put Scripts at the bottom: If you place scripts at the head of the document, page will not load till the loading of scripts get completed.  This will not be a problem if the user is having High speed internet connection, else it will be a problem and there are more chances for the user to leave the page without visiting the site. If you place scripts at the bottom of the HTML document page will load first, followed by the scripts. Hence user can read the content of the page while the script is loading.
3. Javascript and css: Size of the file plays an important role in loading of the page.  When you minify the file, unwanted space gets reduced, reducing the size of the file thereby increasing the loading speed.

Apart from Ranking the site based  upon parameters, it also provides some tools to reduce the size of the image, javascript and css and so on. This Firefox add on contains 3 standard rule sets.

1. YSlow(V2) – this ruleset contains all 22 testable rules.
2. Classic(V1) – this ruleset contains the original 13 rules that were used in YSlow 1.0.
3. Small Site or Blog – this ruleset contains the 14 rules that are applicable to small web sites or blogs. Refer to the image below to see which rules are in this ruleset.

Apart from standard rule sets we can create our own rule sets based upon our own possibilities and interests.  For example, Yahoo suggest to reduce DNS lookups, which cannot be avoided if you are relying upon third party tools for every thing including comment form (like IntenseDebate or Disqus), social networking links.  So you can create a new custom rule set without adding this rule.

You can install this Firefox add on from the Mozilla add on site. Please express your opinion about this post through comments.

About Girish Mony : You can visit his blog to get more details about Browsomatic, for eg. Snapper, for taking In-Browser Screenshots and others to decide which add on to use based upon your needs. 

Also Read : 10 Times Faster Download Speed in Firefox – FireDownload | Best Tips to Make Firefox 3+ Faster ?