Fewer big files or many small files?
Hi,
@960design:
I never saw a css file with 30,000 lines. If there's such a css then it is big, fat file which needs to be delivered to the website visitor. I suppose it is "heavy" more then 500kb, where it can be the same like someones whole site.
Anyway, if some website have or requires a lot of style sheets and framework, which is manifested with 30,000 lines in css, then you will not have one big, fat file. You will have a several css files that determine certain boxes on the site.
In that way you will increase the number of HTTP requests which is against all written advice and recommendations that can be find on the Web..
If you have a couple of css files, the best way of serving them is to use Minify, as i mentioned before, because you will not have served files in this form:
but you can have served files (css for example) in one line:
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="/min/b=wp-content&f=chili/recipes.css,themes/orangesky/style.css,plugins/jquery-comment-preview/jquery-comment-preview.css" media="screen" />
where those files will be also compressed. So the accent is on reducing the numbers of HTTP requests and also compressing the same files (.js and .css)
Also if your business is starting to grow up and your website traffic increases madly, then I advice to upgrade your hosting, because you can not have some successful effects by using shared host. For a million hits per month you must have some good dedicated hosting or even cloud webhosting that can stand the rush.
In that case i can recommend Google's PageSpeed Service, although if you are monitoring statistics of your website on StatCounter for example, you will not be able to see some things because the IP address will be lost by crossing with Google's IP address..
Regards