Bandwith utilization of http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs.php

[domi]

Hi,

I did a speed report on http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs.php just out of curiousity (got to use that Firefox Dev toolbar):

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs.php

I was a little surprised to find out that 17% of bandwidth used is for actual html content and whopping 76% is for images. Anyway, I thought this was worth pointing out.

FYI, the ratio was different on the Signs of Dec 19 for example where there was 440kB of images/flash versus 528kB html content out of a total of 996kB.
Obviously now there is a secondary level which contains the full stories, but I am just comparing main landing pages.

Don't really know what the design goals are for SotT but food for thought (and the moon of course

Hope this information will help you save some money on bandwidth cost.

Dominique.

 

[atreides]

Yes, the obvious result of this new format was a substantial bandwidth gain on ourside by not forcing the user to download all of the signs page in one go every time. I think I will work on the images though, and see if I can squeeze some more k out of that.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I took all the images on the signs page and dramatically decreased their size without any loss in quality at all. Some by like 90%. If you wish, I could send the optimized versions to you guys to put up on the signs page. They are identical in quality to the ones that you already have up! I used "lossy compression", but the only pixels that were "taken out" of the pictures were already imperceptible to the human eye so were just taking up extra space :)

Anyways, lemme know if guys want me to send'em over. The total size of all images on the signs page is about 110KB. After all the lil tinkering I did, I seem to have gotten it to about 50KB. I don't know if this is at all significant to you in terms of bandwidth usage etc.

Oh btw, you guys don't seem to really use images in the articles themselves, so basically the images I optimized was the signs banner itself, and the thumbnail pictures on the right hand side of the books for sale. If there are any others that I missed, or if you would like me to "optimize" any other pics on the website, plz lemme know.

I also noticed that the signs page is divided into "categories/sections", but every time you click on a category to read the articles, it opens a new window and reloads all the images. So if the total K taken by images is 110K, then if someone was to read all 6 sections they'd be using 660K. Again, I don't know if this is any sort of "issue" in terms of bandwidth, and I'm sure you know what you're doing as you probably know much more about this stuff than I do. But one thing you might want to consider, if you haven't already, is to use frames and so when someone clicks a "category" to view its articles, it only reloads the actual text area of the SOTT page, and leaves all the images on all the borders, and all the links on the left side as they are. Just a thought :)