Customers commenting that new site is slow...

[Eileen]

Claranet must have sorted out their server problems...
your site pages are loading nicely this morning.

[george]

Lets hope so, cheers for that Eileen. Any other comments on the site?

[fleetwood]

Hi George
Yup, speed seems fine this morning and site looks good.
Just browsing through I think I found a dead link.
Bottom of this page:

http://www.footballheaven.net/acatal...Series_24.html

link to 'multi packs' fails.

You may have this section hidden, but the code that puts the Prev and Next links bottom of each page still links to hidden pages. The only way around is to move any hidden pages to the bottom of the directory tree, and make sure the last section in the tree before any hidden ones uses a template that dosen't include the 'Next' link.

Hope thats a help

MArtin

[george]

Did a bit of `hoovering` around the site yesterday, so have a `purge` to do. Also easily forgotten if your doing work `behind the scenes`.

A wee bit worried that there was no page titles by default so had to name 230+ pages yesterday...might be a good idea to check these folks.

On the speed thing, Saturday and Sunday are often half the traffic of during the week so maybe thats a factor today.

[george]

Back to normal, just taken 15 (yes, fifteen) seconds to load up a page clicked from the lh section list. Took about 3 secs on Saturday. Reckon I'll have to wait till Clara do their upgrades to see what its like `normally`.

Anyone else with speed problems with this theme?

Still hoping for a little advice to speed up things, even nanoseconds!

[Legends]

Hi George

I am experimenting with a second site hosted by a different company and as a test I uploaded my legends site to this new server and it is MUCH faster . my speed problems are definitely caused by my server, who say they have no plans to upgrade or improve so I will have to look to moving my site.

Hosting is so competitive these days that it is cost effective to look for a better hosting company.

If you need more info e-mail me and I will let you have details of my new site so you can compare.

Cheers

[Highlander]

Response Times

There is a very useful page http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ which will alllow you to evaluate a page.

I tested http://www.highlandclans.co.uk with the following results:

Object Size Totals
Object type Size (bytes)
HTML: 14067
Images: 50794
Javascript: 127346
CSS: 663

Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K 149.68 seconds
28.8K 74.94 seconds
33.6K 64.26 seconds
56K 38.64 seconds


QTY SIZE# TYPE URL
2 46670 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/Act_section_tree.js
1 25114 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/norcascade_pop_data.js
1 17181 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/Act_section_tree_URLs.js
1 14068 IMG http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/#FFFFFF
1 14067 HTML http://www.highlandclans.co.uk
1 13349 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/actiniccore.js
1 12941 IMG http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/HCTitle2.gif
1 12589 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/pop_core.js
1 8675 SCRIPT http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/Act_s..._tree_names.js

The problem seems to be the scripts.

We are hosting with Claranet and they have been very poor of late. However I don't think that this is all down to Claranet. The Section tree scripts seem to be the main problem. I am considering using these scripts to build a "static" menu which I could then include in my templates using an include file.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Niall

[jxm28788]

That's a pretty handy site. It said this about mine -

TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 22 - consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 19 , consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.

But I have no idea what a CSS rollover is...?

[NormanRouxel]

Niall,

NorCascade needs the files Act_section_tree_names.js and Act_section_tree_URLs.js. It doesn't use Act_section_tree.js (which is a whopping 44Kb) so you may want to consider whether you need that file.

Also a plea to Actinic. The section tree structures contain a huge amount of duplicated information - particularly in the URL field.

E.g.

section_tree_URLs[1].pChild[1].pChild[1].sURL = "http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000596.pl?SECTIONID=Argyll%5fDeluxe%5fFormal%5fKilt%5fOutfit%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1";
section_tree_URLs[1].pChild[1].pChild[2].sURL = "http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000596.pl?SECTIONID=Argyll%5fStandard%5fFormal%5fKilt%5fOutfit%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1";
section_tree_URLs[1].pChild[1].pChild[3].sURL = "http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000596.pl?SECTIONID=Argyll%5fBudget%5fFormal%5fKilt%5fOutfit%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1";
section_tree_URLs[1].pChild[1].pChild[4].sURL = "http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000596.pl?SECTIONID=Argyll%5fDeluxe%5fTweed%5fKilt%5fOutfit%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1";
section_tree_URLs[1].pChild[1].pChild[5].sURL = "http://www.highlandclans.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000596.pl?SECTIONID=Argyll%5fLochcarron%5fTweed%5fKilt%5fOutfit%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1";

Why not have a single occurrence of the basic URL and then change the JavaScript routines that use these structures to prepend it to the actual changing data.

Norman

[Highlander]

Slow on the uptake

Norman,

I am afraid I am new to javascripting. I am more used to asp pages and had simply not considered the javascript overhead.

I think I used Act_section_tree.js for the cart variant - but will need to check this out. As you say that would save 44 kb 30-50% ie almost half! Thanks for the suggestion. On my index page the results are.

SCRIPT 126688
IMG 49816
HTML 14067


I am working on a virtually java free cascading menu. This would have a simply include horizontal menu. As sections and pages were added this would change but none of the existing html pages would need to change.

As Actinic stands it really can only be used for very small sites. The Cascading menu is essential for any medium to large site. However, people won't use a site if they can make a cup of coffee while the page loads.

Once again, many thanks for the input.

Niall

[george]

Put my homepage through the webanalyzer.

Total page is 215958 bytes. The Act_section_tree.js makes up over 40% of this.

[pinbrook]

OK I'm getting confused here.....

which is better to use on a medium/large site, inbuilt Actinic js scripts for navigation or notree/norcascade?

[Highlander]

Jo,

I just lost a considered reply so here is the digest.

I don't believe that Actinic inbuilt menus are acceptable for a large site. You cannot expect users to be happy with a very long menu - except on a site map. So, at present, Norcascade is your only option for a large site - and it looks very smart.

On the other hand the old Rule for a page was less than 25k ideal - 50k acceptable. 128k on scripts is too much. Norman reckons 44k of mine is unneccessary for the menu - and he is seldom wrong.

However, I am working on a solution that will remove most of this - but it won't be ready for a while. I am heading to the islands for a few days.

Regards,

Niall

[pinbrook]

Ah Ha! here we have the conflict because I had had to remove norcascade from a large site because it was to slow.

For that site I used the Yahoo style menu which is ok.

So it seems there isn't a quick solution for larger sites ie 1000+ products

[george]

Our site certainly seems faster this week than it was last week. (Clara were allegedly doing upgrading work last Thursday night). I called them yesterday to see if there was any more upgrading in the pipeline, guy reckoned the only outstanding issues were to do with sql.

So. If thats Clara running as it should be, should I still consider bypassing this navigation script issue? Or is our site `speed` now `acceptable`?

I appreciate comments, as it looks like I'm not the only person with this problem. A request for a walk through on how to create the lh box without the `nologin` links might also be pending.