Advice on site/page load speeds please

Have just run a page speed test on our site and getting a poor score from Google. I know that we probably should warehouse our images to help with load speed. But how do we go about enabling compression on files within themes & stacks, reducing render blocking js, leaverage browser cache?? I can reduce the file size of the images (although just done that & Google is still asking for the same amount of reduction??) Will upgrading to RW7 , using either Foundry or Foundation help in any of speed issues? I appreciate that page speed is an issue especially to the young users that are so impatient & flighty, so am keen to get a higher score and faster page speed especially on mobile devices. Any advice on the way forward will be gratefully accepted.
For info: web. www.photoartgb.com, theme Serenade, RW6.4 , Stacks 3 , OS 10.12

Thanks everyone.

I’m not Google (or a young user) but the site loads fast enough for me. You might find this discussion useful.

Hi Rob

Thanks for reply. Had a look at other discussion, not having any joy with Yslow on Firefox or Safari, will try some other speed check sites. Though as you say load speed doesn’t seem bad on mobile devices. A bit paranoid about Google results, never know if they will use them agin you to push you down the rankings, being all powerful an all. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

One thing that SEO Checker revealed is that you don’t have GZip or the equivalent - turned on server side. Google likes that.

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These WeaverCasts Joe did might help you out:
WeaverCast 20
WeaverCast 21

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Hi Robert

Thanks for the info, I’ll check them out>

Cheers

Hi Rob

Thanks for that. Can’t see how to activate that with our hosts, have asked them if we or they can do that, fingers crossed.

Cheers

Gzip… what is that and where do you install it? @robbeattie
thanks

You’ll have that already Lisa if you’re with Greg. It’s in the Control Panel.

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awesome, thanks Rob :slight_smile:

I can’t find it… is it under a specific category? or do I need to install it with the Softallicious app?

@LSPhoto, do you have an ‘Optimize Website’ option in the Software section of cPanel?

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@bigsy Yes, I see that. Is that for Gzip? thx

Yes, it’s the same thing. The trouble with all this hosting malarkey is that people in the know use different terms for the same thing interchangeably so mortals like me get terminally confused. :sunglasses:

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@LSPhoto, yes, but before changing that see if it’s already enabled for your site by your hosting company. There are numerous tools out there to do this, e.g. http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php

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Very cool. Thank you :slight_smile:

Ha. I used to be concerned about asking stupid questions, but not anymore. The developers I work with are so great :slight_smile:

Having spent most of my life as a technical writer, I’ve grown used to asking stupid questions. :sunglasses:

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Apparently we can’t have access to GZip unless we either have a dedicated or Cloud server form our host providers (Fasthosts) & unfortunately we paid a year upfront in May so will probably have to wait a few months before switching. Thanks for all your input though, as always the forum crowd always delivers.

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When you’re ready, check out @barchard / https://www.chillidoghosting.com. Rapidweaver developer Greg runs it.

Hi Lisa Thanks Greg is on my go to list for future hosting. Out of possible interest to you here’s response from our host providers:


Further to your enquiry (170715-000298),
gzip compression will require high resource of the server. Which will affect other websites hosted on the same server. Most likely, this is not possible on our shared platform. However, if you want to optimise your website, you can optimise your scripts instead to lessen the execution time and increase the loading time of your website. Otherwise, you need to migrate a dedicated/Cloud server, or look for a hosting provider that supports gzip on their shared server.


Looks like they really value our custom don’t you think!!

Have a great day.

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