Applying Google Page Speed suggestions to my blog?
-
My blog is pretty slow to load, and I’ve run Google Page Speed on it. The suggestions make sense, but they seem to be the kind of thing that a well-designed page would already do. Am I stuck with the speed it has, or are there ways to improve it? Are there ways to follow up on the Page Speed suggestions (without working at WordPress)?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Without knowing the recommendations, we can’t really say whether or not they can be implemented.
-
hi bob,
you can disable the sharing buttons and check the speed test to see what difference it makes. this might be a good place to start.
my guess is you like the sharing buttons so something you could also do which should help speed things up is only show headlines, excerpts and a bit of meta for your posts on the front page. right now you are calling/loading all those sharing social buttons/info many times, once for each service per post.
condensing full text to excerpts and getting rid of the buttons would make it easier for people to scan your recent posts and click through to the ones they are interested in. they can share from the single post page when they read it.
offhand i don’t think twenty-eleven theme has the option to change full text/excerpt on the front page although you could decrease the number of posts shown. you may want to browse other themes that do this by default on the front page, more of a news or magazine look may work for you.
those are a couple things to try and help readers see your info. hope this helps. good luck.
-
sharing has a check box to remove buttons from the front page so you can do it that way.
you can show excerpts on the front page by using the “insert more tag” in each post but that is kind of a hassle to do for each post, not the best solution.
-
Don’t remove the buttons; they’re trivial.
The two things you can do that will have the most impact are: optimize and then re-upload your images, particularly background and header. And reduce the number of posts on the front page.
-
i suggested the button approach because that’s what the page speed tool identified as the “largest potential performance wins & you should address these items first.” images are often too big bloating your page but the tool did not identify them as such when i ran it. you should do as raincoaster says though and check them out.
in regards to your buttons: the trouble with removing your buttons from the front page is the way you have the front page now, most people are most likely reading your posts on the front page and thus sharing would have to be done from there. i would think about a new layout if you are up to it, then remove the buttons from the front page.
-
Rain is right. I used the Google page speed checker and tried various things in my test blog: removing the sharing buttons made no difference at all. Changing the number of posts per page did make a difference: page speed dropped roughly 2% for every 5 posts I added. But what’s really taking too long to load in your case is the background image.
-
Page speed apart, I agree with dohman’s suggestion to truncate the posts with the more tag (and remove the sharing buttons from the front page): more scrolling down = less user-friendly.
-
That’s a lot to think about. You’ve given me much food for thought.
Thanks, everyone!
Bob
-
indeed the background and header images are pretty big and you should see what you can do to minimize them. but they are not usually what keeps your page from finishing it’s load.
the social networking calls sometimes get a slow reply from the very busy 3rd party servers so your page has to wait… so when this happens it is not a file size issue, it’s a 3rd party server issue. it’s similar to having to wait for ad network servers to serve up an ad, sometimes they are quick, and sometimes they are slow to reply because they are busy and your page is not complete until they are heard from or time out. your home page makes a lot of these calls.
notice at the bottom of your browser in the status bar and see if you can see what is last to load, chances are your images are loaded and it’s still waiting for reddit, facebook or something like that. most of the time now with broadband connections, images are not an issue that make us wait. they are still a big issue for bandwidth, storage and mobile data charges, but they don’t usually make you wait long to load.
-
You’re quite right. Chrome says what it’s waiting for, and it’s those tiny social media buttons.
Why aren’t they cached at WordPress? Better–why aren’t they cached on my PC?
-
they are calling more than just the little image. notice some get back info on the number of likes and such. most of these run a little script for info… the price we pay for being social… :)
-
If you resize your background image and follow the other suggestions, it won’t be such a big deal. The background image is clogging everything. Then reduce the number of posts.
-
my suggestion is get a theme that makes a good presentation of recent and select post headlines & excerpts without having to scroll so far down the home page through loads of text.
do a search in the themes for magazine and you will find some options.
this will also remove all your social button calls from full posts on your home page. this plus minimizing the size of your background, header and other images will get your home page moving and people seeing what you have.
-
@bobseidensticker
I concur with the advice that has been given. Most of this time is used up by downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. reducing the number of components reduces the number of browser to server HTTP requests required to render the whole page and the result is faster page loading time.(1) Optimize and reduce the size of images. Consider not having a backhround image.
(2) Keep the number of large images and all media embeds in posts low. Note externally hosted images and objects take longer to load so wherever possible upload optimized and presized images into your Media Library.
(3) Split content in posts by inserting “the more tag” and place all large images and embeds “after the jump” (after the read more tag).
(4) Reduce the number of posts that appear on your front page > Settings > Reading
(5) Keep the number of widgets in your sidebar low. Your blog’s load time will increase in accord with the number of JavaScripts you have running on your blog. JavaScript files load differently than other HTML elements. While the HTML is loading, the rest of the page continues to download. But in the case of JavaScript the element must completely load before the rest of the page can continue. To counter this problem, place all JavaScript widgets at the bottom of the sidebar.
-
This is what I got when I ran your site main page.
The page Galileo Unchained | For those who hav… got an overall Page Speed Score of 87 (out of 100).
A client I did some work for about a year and a half ago just paid me $1200 to improve their GPS ranking. I was able to get it up from 59 to 66. The rest would involve completely rewriting the severely bloated and poorly written theme they are so attached to.
$171 and change per point. This latest google ploy could end up making me a good living.
-
good point tsp… i don’t think bob needs to worry about his page speed too much. people can still read it fine right away even if final items (social calls) still take a few moments to load…
i think i was getting an 80 when i tested bob’s…
-
You could likely get a different reading each time you check it. Personally I use the page checker at pingdom.com for checking page loading times (in seconds).
The other thing is not to go all obsessive on this and just use it as a guide. The stuff that you can fix, fix, but also be aware of the cost to benefit ratio. I would use it more as a guide for going forward and make changes to how you do things such as being careful with image optimization, and keep all images used on your site, on your site. Do not hot-link off other site such as flickr etc.
Anything 70 and above I would not even worry about.
-
-
- The topic ‘Applying Google Page Speed suggestions to my blog?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 
