Slow Site?? (What to do)

[Aperture]

Hi. I just setup my new site, KevinSchaefer.net, (Okay, just redesigned it) and am having horrible load times. I attached an image of basically what is happening when the page loads. It is very graphic intensive, so I don't expect for it to be ultra fast, but it has to be faster than this.(I think?)

Any ideas?

Any C&C welcome as well!

Thanks, Kevin

 

[iMeowbot]

I'm getting one second, maybe two, to load each of those pages and all the images. I can see the pages draw, but it's not slow enough to be a distraction IMHO.

Edit: and your image sizes already look reasonably slim.

 

[zim]

Well... You have a 100% image based site so ya, its going to be slower then a site that is built on web using good old web text and css. Why not try minimizing your images. I see a number of images that have a lot of white contained in them, why not trim that out as it is not needed. Also, seems that you have a lot of slices that aren't needed. Try minimizing the number of slices.. example, bottom row could be one long slice. Maybe also try working with different compressions schemes or applying more to the current images, front top slice is 160kb which is a bit much in my opinion. You might also want to consider adding in or replacing some of your text with web text so that the search engines can find your work.

All that said, I think if you were to keep this set up, using imageready, then I would suggest working on your compression settings, lower the file sizes.

Good luck

Off subject, I am a bit confused as to why put work up if it is all to be password protected.

 

[Aperture]

Well... You have a 100% image based site so ya, its going to be slower then a site that is built on web using good old web text and css. Why not try minimizing your images. I see a number of images that have a lot of white contained in them, why not trim that out as it is not needed. Also, seems that you have a lot of slices that aren't needed. Try minimizing the number of slices.. example, bottom row could be one long slice. Maybe also try working with different compressions schemes or applying more to the current images, front top slice is 160kb which is a bit much in my opinion. You might also want to consider adding in or replacing some of your text with web text so that the search engines can find your work.

All that said, I think if you were to keep this set up, using imageready, then I would suggest working on your compression settings, lower the file sizes.

Good luck

Off subject, I am a bit confused as to why put work up if it is all to be password protected.

Thanks iMeowbot and zim for your help. I'll try out your tips.

I password protected the "Portals" but not the "Albums". The Albums are public and the Portals are meant to be private, to share certain images with others/etc.

Thanks!

 

[zim]

Thanks iMeowbot and zim for your help. I'll try out your tips.

I password protected the "Portals" but not the "Albums". The Albums are public and the Portals are meant to be private, to share certain images with others/etc.

Thanks!

I only asked because when I was looking at the site lat it didn't seem like there was any work in it... just took another look and saw that that this is. The photos look great!

 

[Aperture]

Hi guys. The site is running MUCH faster now. After I posted this, I logged into my cPanel account and it was running extremely slow, so I figured that it was the server. I checked this morning, its running a lot better.

Thanks!

 

[zync]

You use images too judiciously. It would be faster if you didn't use images for the navigation. The could be a simple div with a black background and links within the div. I didn't check the source but from that I gather you're using a program to create your site instead of actually coding. I'm guessing from ImageReady (I checked—you did use ImageReady).

You could have used just a main image and added a border to a container div, which would save all of the space your black borders take up (even though it would be small).

You're using a table based layout which takes longer to render than CSS based layouts. At least ImageReady specified the images sizes for you so that at least let's the browser figure out table size quicker. Table layouts also require more lines of code to produce and are far more difficult to maintain. In your case, there are also way more table cells than would be required to produce such a layout.

Just so that you'll know, table layouts are considered unprofessional in current web design. Tables are strictly for tabular data.

A lot of the images are inefficient. The gradients could be reproduced with a single 1px wide file stretched to fill the box. That would save you a hell of a lot of space and would look exactly the same.

Honestly, unless you have practically no free time, I'd seriously just spend a few days to learn web design. This type of site should not cause you too many problems compatibility-wise. You wouldn't even need a huge understanding of XHTML or CSS to pull it off with style. For comparison I could probably code most pages on your site in 15-20 lines with an approximately 25 line global CSS file. If you have any questions about that shoot, I'll be glad to help you.

As for the layout, I like it. It looks nice and clean. It's not the most original, but it's effective. So for that I give you props.

 

[tech4all]

Hi schaef2493!

First off just wanted to say that your site seems to be loading just fine for me. And that I really like the design of your site.

But, I would like to offer some suggestions for you:

Navigation bar text:

Is there a reason why the text is touching the above it? Maybe you could center them vertically in the black bar? It's creating a tangent for me. Oh yeah samething for the copyright at the bottom, maybe bring it up a couple pixels?

Section headings alignment:

I do like how you did the category headings for About, Photography, and Contact. Like with the vertical line. However they're not consistently placed throughout all the pages. I think it would look nicer if they would remain in the same place through the site. Then for the category text, you can have it right justified instead of centered so the text starting points don't originate from the center but from the right or the last letter. For Photography, the text looks to cramped in there. You could just move the vertical line over to the right a bit. And for the About body copy, the lines are to wide, try shorting them down a bit. You can also decide where the top of the vertical line aligns with the main body copy or content, and also keep the horizontal distance from the vertical line and the content the same distance through out the site (you did that well with About and Contact). In other word just make sure everything regarding alignment is the same; like I noticed the black frame changes size and thickness slightly in some pages. Hope that makes sense.

Otherwise good site. I like the slight gradation you got going on the pages - gives it a nice theme (maybe it could be implemented better as suggest by zync). Also, not trying to put you down at all, really like the site. Just some constructive criticism

 

[bartelby]

Each page loads in about 2 seconds for me.