Anyone know how I can eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content? This is the recommendation I get from Google PageSpeed Insights. It’s the one thing that is holding my web page speed performance back and I haven’t a clue how to go about fixing it. My website is www.typarke.co.uk and the theme is SeyDesign Aptenon.
Thanks!
Don’t take Google PageSpeed Insights too seriously.
You say that Peter but it’s really nice to tie up the loose end and make the website fly. It also helps with SEO performance. The GTMetrix website is also excellent for this.
It is nice but you don’t have any control about what themes and stacks do with css and Javascript. CloudFlare speeds things up quite a lot.
Hello Gary,
Compliments with your beautiful website, it looks very nice.
I’m a beginner with Reapid Weaver and I’m interested in which theme your using. Mainly because it seems that you can place your own pictures in the banner.
Thanks in advance for your response.
Gert van den Brink
Lochem, the Netherlands.
You’ll be pleased to learn that you can place your own images in the majority of third-party and built-in themes. Instructions on how to do this can usually be found on the themes’ product pages.
Marten
RapidWeaver Central
Hi Gert, glad you like the website. It’s essential to our camping and yurt business, so important that we get it right. I’ve been doing some annual updates - including adding tonal images to the sidebar background and EC5, which seems to work well. Though I had a problem yesterday with the sidebar image not displaying that is now sorted. Aptenon is a great theme - and responds really well to mobile layout with a nice menu system. The only thing it lacks is the ability to run a slide show in the banner area. But in some ways that’s no bad thing.
Hi Peter, I thought that might be the case. Will have a look at CloudFlare…
Google PageSpeed Insights really isn’t the best tool for the job. As I’ve said before, if you’re using PageSpeed Insights for testing a RapidWeaver website, then you’re doing it all wrong! If you read the documentation you’ll see it’s geared more towards enterprise level websites receiving millions of visits a day.
As I’ve covered in my Wiki, tools like YSlow are far more appropriate to use for RapidWeaver built websites and will return realistic results that any average webmaster can implement. Theme and page type choice in RapidWeaver will also yield significant differences in loading speed.
Another vote for CloudFlare; which will bring noticeable performance, reliability and security gains to any website.
Thanks for this Will. Should have read your Wiki first! I’ve seen YSlow on GTMetrix site, but hadn’t taken and much note of it (but will now). I’m tempted to give CloudFlare a try but since 99% of my customers or in the UK, I’m uncertain whether there would be much benefit.
Your clients would definitely benefit from using Cloudflare.
I’m the client and the operator! Do you think Cloudflare free is worth a go or, do I need to spend 20 per month to get the full benefit?
Give the free account a go first. I pay for their service. However, to be honest, even I would probably be fine with the free account. I just love their service, so I pay then $20/mo.
The free service is very good. One of the companies I use for hosting, UK2, now allows you to set it up within their control panel. Many of my customers are in the UK, too, @oldgustav.
@oldgustav I have two domains using free CloudFlare accounts and one paid. I tend to think that if you are selling with any sort of volume online it’s probably worth the $20 due to the added features. CloudFlare is not just about the speed but also the added security.
Your website opened very quickly for me but I am also in the UK. With my server I found that anywhere in Europe was fast loading but CloudFlare made a big difference for visitors from the US and as it turned out the vast majority of my sales are coming from North America. If all your customers are from the UK and your traffic volumes are low I suspect the biggest advantage of CloudFlare is likely to be security. It’s relatively easy to setup though and your site will remain visible to visitors even if your own server goes down.
oldgustav - I would say the ends on your site are pretty well tied up and it loads perfectly quickly without needing to do anything. Sometimes the page speed type of analysis just plants seeds of doubt in your mind that something irrelevant is an issue.
Nice site and great to see another Pembrokeshire RW site. This site GoWestHolidays in Pembrokeshire for a somewhat similar site was one of my first RW sites.
Thanks for that Ashley. Seems that everyone is raving about CloudFlare on this forum. My biggest concern has been the amount of spam bots that we’ve been getting in the past few months. I found a chunk of code to add to my htaccess file to block the likes of semalt and iloveitaly etc. If this doesn’t work, I’ll sign up to CloudFlare - assuming CF can block this sort of webspam…
Thanks Conger. Great site but a bit slow loading on my terrible, <1mbs broadband.
It is slow but it doesn’t really matter. It is successful and therefore works so any additional time spent to improve it just isn’t needed.