Slow Loading Home Page?

[Chrisadapt]

The Actinic website I maintain is Cardoons.co.uk and for a few months we have noticed that, when accessing the website using a web browser, the home page takes a fairly long time to load certain elements. For a while it has been the footer area that doesn't want to load, and now we have recently added an image slideshow on the home page. Due to the footer holding up the loading process, the slideshow doesn't display correctly.

Suddenly, and the amount of time this takes seems to vary from connection to connection, the footer will appear, and the slideshow will click into place, appearing as it should.

I've tried removing all of the content in the main body area on the home page and uploading, but the same issue is happening. Oddly it is only the home page that has this loading issue - every other page on the website seems to load the footer very quickly.

Would anyone have any idea what this could be? The frustrating thing is that any time I want to tweak and test the home page, I have to upload the whole website just to test one page. Doing the 'preview in browser' loads everything immediately, so this doesn't reflect how it is on the actual server.

Any suggestions much appreciated...!! Thanks.

[Duncan Rounding]

There are a few things I notice that could be improved.

spinningcard_anim.gif is large and personally I feel could be changed for a simple static image.

You could also load the jquery routines onto your own server and change the references in the design.

I also see other js offsite references that may not be needed on all pages, they could be changed to only be present on relevant pages.

There often ways to hide the images in slideshows until all loaded, which is worth looking into.

[Chrisadapt]

Many thanks for your suggestions Duncan. The GIF is something I can't remove because it explains visually what the product looks like, which is key. It seems to load with no problem whilst everything else is still held up, but still something to bear in mind nonetheless so thanks.

Your jQuery suggestion was helpful, looking into that now, and I think you may be right regarding the JS references. It seems to be loading "Actinic Javascript functions" and there is a fair amount of code in there, so I may need to experiment with turning some of it off and see if that helps.

Thanks again, fingers crossed.

[Duncan Rounding]

I don't think you need to worry about the Actinic js, rather the offsite code.

[Chrisadapt]

Sorry I phrased that badly - there's a pink link within the code (correct term escapes me) called 'Javascript Functions', clicking that takes me to a new area of code containing Actinic JS which I'll leave, but Google maps code, and so on, which shouldn't really be on every page. Was the sort of code you were referring to?

[Chrisadapt]

When doing a Block if, if I do if pagetype == "Home" it also targets the pages that have been created with the home page template like the About Us and Contact Us pages. Is there another way I can target the home page only or is it all down to how it has been set up?

Example: I'm doing this to block Google maps etc if the home page is the current page - but this is currently hiding it from the Contact Us page as well.

[graphicz]

I think there is a condition 'Is website home page' or similar. (Not at my desk.)

[Chrisadapt]

Thanks Jonathan, I figured out what the culprit is - it's Google Analytics tracking code. Removing it temporarily makes the site website load immediately (getting there!). However - it needs to be present.

Within the GA code block there are a few block ifs and references to HTTPS rather than HTTP, as I recall this was done so that the website's SSL worked properly. I've a hunch I need a block if to pass either 'http' or 'https' depending on whether the user is looking at a brochure/shop page or accessing the shopping cart. Would I be right in thinking that this is slowing things down on the home page?

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to how I would identify the home page (but not with "Home" as this is too general and thus includes About Us etc) so that I can say with block if code, "if on home page then insert http, otherwise insert https" (I guess the other pages can remain with https in their analytics code as there is no noticeable slowdown on those pages). And if this isn't the culprit of the slowdown, I can use the code I'm asking for to eliminate some of the code through trial and error, until I'm left with the basic tracking code that works with no slow down.

Many thanks.