how to test the loading speed of your site?
 

Does anyone know a website that test the loading speed of your pages with different speed connexions? There used to be websitegarage but they closed their site...so I.m looking for an alternative

good question I would also like to know.

FRONTPAGE DOES IT

If you use HomeSite open the web page that you want to test, on the top menu click "Tools" / "Document Weight" it will show the load speed of a web page for a surfer using a 14.4, 28.8 and a 56k modem, the newer version may show load speeds for DSL and Cable - it use to be Allaire but it now appears that Macromedia now sells the software:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/

:)

jus buy a modem and an isdn card. Then test your sites. Thats the best way. Even have several comps installed with different operating systems and browsers. Thats the way to go. Thats how i do it :-)

login to the net:1orglaugh

actually I'm looking for a service that would test the site for me, I don't want to test it from my PC only. I want a third party server to test it and see if improvements could be done to html etc...

ie. a website where I just put my url and they test it with different connexion speeds and spot html errors on the fly

Ah - That's what I've been doing wrong.

:winkwink:

Simple solution. Make the website as small as possible. Sure if you create cookie cutter photoshop main pages you don't have that much option to save bytes.

1. Check every image if you can make it smaller. Jpgoptimizer really does magic on filesizes.

2. keep you background images very small or leave it out completely.

3. go easy on the java script. every word of code will make the html file bigger.

4. ALWAYS use width and height attributes on images. I cannot stress that enough. This is the most common mistake by many even established webmasters.

5. There is the 8 second rule. If the website isn't showing within 8 sec you lost the surfer. I even think its more like 5 secs. The website should show the main structure within 2 secs and then the images might take a little longer but if I see a white page for 5 secs I hit stop and surf somewhere else as simple as that.

6. Try staying away from fancy Flash graphics or using DHTML that can only be shown by the latest browser versions. Looks really fancy but you will loose a lot of surfers. I never get it that webmasters think the porn surfer comes to see a piece of flash animation. The porn surfer wants porn as quickly as possible. So a hot image on the main page might do a better job than a animation that needs 30 secs to load.

It takes skill to do designing the way I like to do it but in the end you will have a site that is fast and looks unique.

I totally agree with you :) But since I've been in this business for about 5 years, I already knew all that :) But these are still good tips. I use image ready for image optimization, I set width and height for my tables which make them load faster, I use style sheets to avoid repeating font tags and such, I don't use any flash or dhtml etc....

But still, I would really like to find a website that can test my pages with different speed connexions from different places and that can tell me how long it takes to load, and what are the html errors if there are any etc...websitegarage used to do all that and was really handy..but they closed down their site and I'm looking for a similar service ...

YOU are FUCKING crazy on what you think are load times of a page. Most people DON'T have cable or DSL modems and thost times are WAY out of wack, unless you are loading a text only page, which porn webmasters are NOT. You need to think in terms of 30 seconds in my thoughts, if a surfer expects faster, from a 56k modem, he/she does not need to surf porn sites.....

Just MY thoughts....

The whole page should load within 30 sec, but the first few images are crucial to keeping the surfers attention so they don't close the window.

Free Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool

Mercury Interactive Astra LoadTest (Shareware)

Remember that the loading speed of your site varies not just with connection speed but with the path it takes through the Internet from the requesting site. For that, functions like traceroute and ping are informative. If you already realize this, well, maybe someone else doesn't.

jesus, theres nothing on the web that can do this ? website garage useed to do that for you, cant remember the URL and im too lazy to look it up

I once had found an answer here. The answer was:

Put your website on a floppy, and load it from the floppy.

But this only works with static files of course

Andre

My 8 second rule was for a 56k modem user. XXXPaysitedesign said it. Its the time your basic structure has to load. Images can take longer. When I design a site and its loaded on a cable modem you have it instantly as simple as that.