I am getting complaints about a slow site. Help

Glory2Jesus4Photography

Like the title says ,
I have been getting complaints about my site running slow. I would like to have a fast easy to navigate site. I have no idea what would make it slow so I need your help to figure out what is causing my site to be slow.
Link in my sig.
Thanks Corey

Glory2Jesus4Photography

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

Like the title says ,
I have been getting complaints about my site running slow. I would like to have a fast easy to navigate site. I have no idea what would make it slow so I need your help to figure out what is causing my site to be slow.
Link in my sig.
Thanks Corey

Moving up to not be forgotten so I can get help

Andy

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

Moving up to not be forgotten so I can get help

SmugMug support is the forum for this,I'm moving it.

Better yet, is to write our Support Heroes with details so we can give you some diagnostic tools to run. Your site is instantly fast for me, I'm in NY, accessing via high speed cable internet.

Andy

Another thing, your homepage slideshow is huuuuuge.

Have a look at the file sizes and load times for some of your images:

if a visitor has a slowish or balky connection, they could get frustrated on the homepage.

You might try for smaller, optimized files for your slideshow (compress them, save for web, etc).

Glory2Jesus4Photography

Thanks for pointing that out Andy.
I will get the slide show down in size. But would that be causing other pages to run slow as well. Like a persons galleries.

Andy wrote:

Another thing, your homepage slideshow is huuuuuge.

Have a look at the file sizes and load times for some of your images:

if a visitor has a slowish or balky connection, they could get frustrated on the homepage.

You might try for smaller, optimized files for your slideshow (compress them, save for web, etc).

Andy

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

Thanks for pointing that out Andy.
I will get the slide show down in size. But would that be causing other pages to run slow as well. Like a persons galleries.

what page, specifically, precisely, and exactly?

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Another thing, your homepage slideshow is huuuuuge.

Have a look at the file sizes and load times for some of your images:

if a visitor has a slowish or balky connection, they could get frustrated on the homepage.

You might try for smaller, optimized files for your slideshow (compress them, save for web, etc).

They are using the stretchy slideshow. It scales up or down to fit your screen size automatically. Yes, it will be slower than a smaller one, but it's also gorgeous on a good screen. Same intention as the new gallery slideshow and the full screen slideshow and the new journal view (make those images as big as possible).

The slideshow shouldn't have anything to do with the rest of the site.

JonMikal

i'm really getting fed up with this. i've never seen such a slow site. it's been an intermittent problem since i've had it...3 years now or so. time to look around for another service.

Tim Kamppinen

jfriend wrote:

They are using the stretchy slideshow. It scales up or down to fit your screen size automatically.

WHOA, since when can we use a stretchy slideshow on our homepage? I thought this wasn't possible... is there a thread you could point me to or something?

jfriend

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

WHOA, since when can we use a stretchy slideshow on our homepage? I thought this wasn't possible... is there a thread you could point me to or something?

Customization #20 right here.

Tim Kamppinen

jfriend wrote:

Customization #20 right here.

You truly are awesome. Thanks!

jfriend

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

Like the title says ,
I have been getting complaints about my site running slow. I would like to have a fast easy to navigate site. I have no idea what would make it slow so I need your help to figure out what is causing my site to be slow.
Link in my sig.
Thanks Corey

Corey, I can see one giant reason why your site is slow. You have an enormous amount of information in your custom header (two massive tables) which are hidden on almost every page. I don't know exactly what problem you're trying to solve, but this is the worst way to do this because the browser has to load all this data over the internet and parse all those tables on every single page in your site. Get this stuff out of your custom header and your site will get a lot faster and the browser will be able to breathe a sigh of relief when it lands on your site.

It's 98k of HTML tables and so large, I can't even post the whole thing on dgrin. It starts with this:

<!-- End Site Keyword Search -->
<!-- My homepage backgrounds-->
<! -- Calendars -->
<! -- End Calendars -->
<! -- Catalog & Help page -->
<div id="SMhelp">
<body  class="tempClass2 notLoggedIn pureSmugCSS bodyColor_Black">
<!-- Start Content -->
<div id="content" class="bobe_cat">
    <div id="tabbed_box_1" class="tabbed_box">  
        <span id="catTitle">Catalog<span id="catSmall"></span></span>       
        <div id="cat_tabs" class="yui-navset yui-navset-top">
            <ul class="yui-nav">
<li id="tab_cat_bprints" onclick="location.hash='Bprints'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#Bprints"]#Bprints[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>
<li id="tab_cat_prints" onclick="location.hash='Prints'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#Prints"]#Prints[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>
<li id="tab_cat_merchandise" onclick="location.hash='Merchandise'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#Merchandise"]#Merchandise[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>
<li id="tab_cat_downloads" onclick="location.hash='Downloads'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#Downloads"]#Downloads[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>
<li id="tab_cat_more" onclick="location.hash='More'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#More"]#More[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>
<li id="tab_cat_help" onclick="location.hash='Help'"><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family/Other/Guestbook/3745773_6Lpzv#Help"]#Help[/URL]"><em></em></a></li>            </ul>
<div class="yui-content">
<div><table width="900" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" valign="top" align="center">

and ends with this:

<h3>Placing an order?</h3>
            <ul style="font-size: 14px;">
                <li> <a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/prints/shipping.mg"]/prints/shipping.mg[/URL]">Shipping info</a></li>
                <li><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/visitor-help/digital-prints"]/visitor-help/digital-prints[/URL]">Help with the shopping cart</a></li><li><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/visitor-help/cropping"]/visitor-help/cropping[/URL]">Help with cropping</a></li>
                <li><a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/help/too-red"]/help/too-red[/URL]">Help with color</a></li>
            </ul>
            <h3>Already placed your order?</h3>
            <p  class="pR" style="font-size: 14px;">To view an order you've already placed, don't use the "Login" link you see at the top of SmugMug pages. Instead, click the link in your order confirmation email and you'll be taken directly to your order.</p>
            <p class="pR"  style="font-size: 14px;">Made a mistake? Was your order lost in the mail? <a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/visitor-help/reviewing-print-order"]/visitor-help/reviewing-print-order[/URL]">Get help</a>.</p>
            <h3>Looking for someone?</h3>
            <ul style="font-size: 14px;">
                <li> <a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/gallery/7051049_9kcsc"]http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/gallery/7051049_9kcsc[/URL]">Contact Glory 2 Jesus 4 Photography</a>.</li>
                <li> <a href="[URL="http://www.dgrin.com/view-source:http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/visitor-help/contact-smugmug"]/visitor-help/contact-smugmug[/URL]">Contact SmugMug Support Heroes</a>.</li>
            </ul>        <div class="spacer"></div></div></div>            </div>
            <div id="tab_footer"></div>
            <div class="spacer"></div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- End Content -->
</div>

Glory2Jesus4Photography

Thank you John,
That is the code to put the SM help page in that BrandoLino has here http://www.brandolinoimaging.com/gallery/2997788_xDfqo
I guess if I want to use that I will need to find a better way to put it in.
Thank you,
Corey

jfriend

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

Thank you John,
That is the code to put the SM help page in that BrandoLino has here http://www.brandolinoimaging.com/gallery/2997788_xDfqo
I guess if I want to use that I will need to find a better way to put it in.
Thank you,
Corey

When he did this, I recommended against it for the same reason. The code is huge and you pay the price on every single page in your site. I think the problem he had was that the code was too large for the albumDescription so he couldn't put it in an HTML gallery which is the normal course of action for something like this. I don't know of any other options.

Perhaps link to a Smugmug help page and just go without your branding for that page rather than trying to recreate it? Probably better than slowing down every page on your site.

Or find some other site that lets you specify the HTML and create a full HTML page with your branding with this in it there and link to it.

Glory2Jesus4Photography

jfriend wrote:

When he did this, I recommended against it for the same reason. The code is huge and you pay the price on every single page in your site. I think the problem he had was that the code was too large for the albumDescription so he couldn't put it in an HTML gallery which is the normal course of action for something like this. I don't know of any other options.

Perhaps link to a Smugmug help page and just go without your branding for that page rather than trying to recreate it? Probably better than slowing down every page on your site.

Or find some other site that lets you specify the HTML and create a full HTML page with your branding with this in it there and link to it.

I agree. I have yanked the code out and fixed the errors that you pointed out But the site still seems sluggish even with general browsing of categories. They take a bit to load the whole page and the thumbnails are slow to show up. It does not seem to matter what theme is used. Here are a couple of links just to give a reference http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/galleries

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/All-Things-Beautiful-scenery

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Portraits

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family

There is one specific gallery that I have gotten a few complaints on but I would need to PM the link due to the client wants it unlisted and not for public viewing.
If it is ok to pm you and /or Andy the link I will but I know how full your message box must get. So just let me know.
Thanks,
Corey

jfriend

Glory2Jesus4Photography wrote:

I agree. I have yanked the code out and fixed the errors that you pointed out But the site still seems sluggish even with general browsing of categories. They take a bit to load the whole page and the thumbnails are slow to show up. It does not seem to matter what theme is used. Here are a couple of links just to give a reference http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/galleries

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/All-Things-Beautiful-scenery

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Portraits

http://glory2jesus4photography.smugmug.com/Family

There is one specific gallery that I have gotten a few complaints on but I would need to PM the link due to the client wants it unlisted and not for public viewing.
If it is ok to pm you and /or Andy the link I will but I know how full your message box must get. So just let me know.
Thanks,
Corey

One thing I've noticed about categories and sub-categories is that they show a lot faster if they are displayed a fixed thumbnail image (from a featured photo in the first gallery in the category) rather than a random thumbnail. This makes some sense because with a fixed thumbnail, the image URL comes with the page and the browser can just request it immediately and it will be cached in the browser after the first time too. With the random thumbnail, the browser has to go to Smugmug's servers to find out what image URL to then go get for every single thumb. So, it's an extra server roundtrip for every random thumb.

So, you might want to try doing a feature photo on at least the first gallery in each category/sub-category. This will fix the thumbnail and make the thumbs faster to show up.

jfriend

jfriend wrote:

One thing I've noticed about categories and sub-categories is that they show a lot faster if they are displayed a fixed thumbnail image (from a featured photo in the first gallery in the category) rather than a random thumbnail. This makes some sense because with a fixed thumbnail, the image URL comes with the page and the browser can just request it immediately and it will be cached in the browser after the first time too. With the random thumbnail, the browser has to go to Smugmug's servers to find out what image URL to then go get for every single thumb. So, it's an extra server roundtrip for every random thumb.

So, you might want to try doing a feature photo on at least the first gallery in each category/sub-category. This will fix the thumbnail and make the thumbs faster to show up.

And, here's a Firebug trace of your Services category page after I cleared my browser cache. What seems to be killing it is that there are so many server requests that they get queued up waiting for the first ones to come back and because they are random images, they don't come back that quickly. You can also see what else is taking time.

For this sort of thing, I highly recommend you get some tools to help you. This screen shot comes from the Net/All tab in Firebug (free add-on to Firefox).

Allen

Here's a typical Smugmug style page load today.