This is driving me nuts!

[ArtsApart]

Images can still be big if resized. As in resized in a html editor and not the actual graphic. The only other things it could be (its not your connection) where your website is hosted (abroad) lots of javascript, lots of php requests, large flash files on your pages....whats actually taking ages to load, graphics or content?

Hmmm interesting about the image sizes, as I can remember that I had some very big images on there that I had to reduce down to fit in my template when i first uploaded them, so that was done in and editor, so that might be my problem........its anything with graphics on it that seems to have difficulty loading as the pages that have just text on them normally come in at a reasonable speed but as you can imagine when your trying to sell art graphics is very important indeed! thanks for the tip and for taking the time to reply

[walsharoo]

Paul is right. There is a considerable bottleneck when it gets to that script. I loaded the page few times and the average time for that script to run was 4 secs - on a simulated 56k connection.

Although I think it's a combination of a lot of things that are compounding your problem.

You have over 50 HTTP calls on your home page alone. Anything over 20 is going to start affecting page render times.

You have 53 (at about 500k worth of) images on the home page and a lot of them are PNG's. PNG's are useful when you want decent transparency or good quality images, but you could most likely drop the size by half if you converted them to GIF's.

There are 6 CSS files referenced on the home page, this seems to me like a lot. Most likely they are template files that have been use to create the final design. I wouldn't have thought you need that much CSS for your design. Also, merging these into one, maybe 2 files will reduce HTTP calls.

There doesn't seem to be any compression on the site at all, so all the files are coming down as is. You can reduce the files sizes (especially things like CSS) with gzip or some other compression script.

Also you have Google Analytics added to your pages. Although this is in the correct place, it can sometimes slow the page down when loading. Not much - I know of - that you can do about it, but it's worth knowing it can sometimes slow pages right down.

I would speak to your web developer about optimizing the site. Although your page loads don't look too bad at this time of the day on a decent connection. When you open the site at peak times, or if you're using mobile broadband or 3G it will make a significant difference...

Good Luck.

[ArtsApart]

Since image resizing is processor intensive, that is why the pages take such a long time to load, it has to resize 12 thumbnail images each time (and the larger the original image, the more the shrink required, and the more time it takes).

You need to have a word with your web developers about changing the script so that either the resized images are cached for reuse again, or the images are pre-generated at some other time, admin content publish time rather than user page view time.

This issue may also be compounded by cheap hosting, if you have hundreds of other sites on the same server. If on the fly image resizing isn't the issue, then there may be other issues with a strained server, e.g. waiting for database connections, hitting the database too much, etc.

Wow! thanks for the awebapart (are we related BTW with the Apart being in our names lol!) Thank you for such a detailed reply.......i actually put the site together but have no idea what I am doing with it , so I cant say as if you have hit the nail on the head or not , I will have to delve deeper and see if I can get my head around what you have said, to see if it is the case, but it will be such a help to know what it is that I might be looking for in the first place, so thanks so much for that....if its not to cheeky to ask can I ask you how I might go about finding out if it is a strained server as well, where would I source this information from please? Thanks so much for looking and for your suggestions I will have look into those thumb nails

[ArtsApart]

Paul is right. There is a considerable bottleneck when it gets to that script. I loaded the page few times and the average time for that script to run was 4 secs - on a simulated 56k connection.

Although I think it's a combination of a lot of things that are compounding your problem.

You have over 50 HTTP calls on your home page alone. Anything over 20 is going to start affecting page render times.

You have 53 (at about 500k worth of) images on the home page and a lot of them are PNG's. PNG's are useful when you want decent transparency or good quality images, but you could most likely drop the size by half if you converted them to GIF's.

There are 6 CSS files referenced on the home page, this seems to me like a lot. Most likely they are template files that have been use to create the final design. I wouldn't have thought you need that much CSS for your design. Also, merging these into one, maybe 2 files will reduce HTTP calls.

There doesn't seem to be any compression on the site at all, so all the files are coming down as is. You can reduce the files sizes (especially things like CSS) with gzip or some other compression script.

Also you have Google Analytics added to your pages. Although this is in the correct place, it can sometimes slow the page down when loading. Not much - I know of - that you can do about it, but it's worth knowing it can sometimes slow pages right down.

I would speak to your web developer about optimizing the site. Although your page loads don't look too bad at this time of the day on a decent connection. When you open the site at peak times, or if you're using mobile broadband or 3G it will make a significant difference...

Good Luck.

Thanks for that walsharoo that has also given me some stuff to get my head around ....as I previously mentioned in another post I am the web designer for this fantastic site (said with tongue in cheek of course) and I haven't got the foggiest what you are talking to me about but then that is probably because I havent got the foggiest idea about web design in the first place lol!!! but I expect you have guessed that already from the problems you have highlighted with my site .....so its time to go and tear my hair out time trying to rectify these little problems that all you helpful people are finding for me thanks so much for the suggestions of what I might need to do.....

[walsharoo]

Sorry if I've caused more problems that I've solved

A good place to start, if you haven't got Photoshop, or another good image package is something like this:

Google 'dynamic drive image optimizer' - can add links yet. You will be able to reduce your image size. Then your next focus should be that thumbnail generator.

That should solve the big part of the problem, the rest you can just tweak as you go...

[vinde]

Pingdom dot com actually has a tool to let you measure the loading speed of your page and break the page down to all its components.
So can see which component load the slowest and causes problem.

[vinde]

OK. I run a quick test and here is the loading test result for your website.

Website information

Total loading time:7.3 seconds
Total objects:63 (530.7 KB)
External objects:2 (0.3 KB)
(X)HTML:2 (26.5KB)
RSS/XML:0
CSS:5 (11.4KB)
Scripts:2 (0KB)
Images:54 (492.8KB)
Plugins:0
Other:0
Redirected:2

[awebapart]

can I ask you how I might go about finding out if it is a strained server as well, where would I source this information from please?

Ask your host how many other websites can you expect to be hosted on the same server as you are using. Sometimes you can find out how many other sites are on the same server IP address by using reverse IP, although this is not always an accurate figure for the sites on the server.

Find a large (large in file size) image on your site and see how long it takes to download after a browser refresh (delete cache). Then see how long a similar sized image takes from a different website hosted elsewhere. Although this mainly gives an indication of bandwidth strain, not other areas of strain like memory, processor, database etc.

Since you say you are not a web designer, let alone a web developer, it isn't worth going into too much detail about finding speed bottlenecks (slow areas) in code, suffice to say that an experienced developer (better still an experienced developer who is also familiar with Virtuemart and Joomla) should be able to analyse, understand, and identify suspect areas in code (server side and client browser side), and place timing code to see how long it takes to run. For example, how long a database connection or database query takes to run, to identify either slow areas or potential areas that are affected by server strain.

[ArtsApart]

Sorry if I've caused more problems that I've solved

A good place to start, if you haven't got Photoshop, or another good image package is something like this:

Google 'dynamic drive image optimizer' - can add links yet. You will be able to reduce your image size. Then your next focus should be that thumbnail generator.

That should solve the big part of the problem, the rest you can just tweak as you go...

Lol Walshroo! Don't worry about it, after all it wouldn't be that hard as i really am fumbling around in the dark here. It does have an idea to know what area to aim in though and you have helped with that so its all gratefully received. ill check that google thingy out as that sounds like it will be a huge help ....thanks once again

[ArtsApart]

Pingdom dot com actually has a tool to let you measure the loading speed of your page and break the page down to all its components.
So can see which component load the slowest and causes problem.

Thanks for that vinde, that sounds like a good little tool to use as well, much appreciated for the tip ill check that out too!