ONLINE TOOLS YOU SHOULD USE TO SPEED UP YOUR WEBSITE
- Pingdom tools- full page test
The Pingdom “Full Page Test” loads a complete HTML page including all objects(images, CSS, JavaScript, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes).It mimics the way a page in a web browser, reporting on total loading time, the numbers of objects on the page and the results can be sorted by useful metrics such as load order, load time and file size.
The tool is particularly useful for identifying slow loading internal objects or external scripts through the “order by” functionality, though the tool itself does not provide a commentary and recommendations on potential performance issues.
- Google page speed
Page speed performs several tests on a site’s web server configuration and front-end-code. These tests are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.
Google’s plugin integrates nicely with Firebug, the code preview plgin, standard in all Firefox SEO setups and seems a lot more reliable than the earlier versions. It’s strength is that the recommendations made in the speed test sometimes contain actual examples.
- org
Based on the Internet Explorer specific ,AOL, developed tool Pagetest, the online version offers the ability to choose test location, Browser(IE7 OR IE8), and more advanced settings such as repeat testing for more reliable data. Matt Cutts mentioned this tool in an interview with Mike McDonald at Pubcon 2009.
The test is surprisingly powerful with an optimization check list and waterfall report, similar to Pingdom’s tools. The downside of the UI experience is an inability to sort by performance metrics.
- Website Optimiser.com
WebsiteOptimiser produces a basic , but usefull page objects report with a particular focus on bandwidth saving through the use of compression. The report also comments and gives warnings on image size, scripts and CSS. Very handy , though bypassing the CAPTCHA to get to the report was an unwelcome step in the process.
- Google webmaster tools
Google webmaster tools though extremely basic, the crawl stats section can give you a directional feel for the overall performance of your website. In the example from Builtvisible above, you’ll see a sharp decrease in time spent downloading a page in mid October. That was due to a site redesign and relaunch, where a lot of inefficient code was replaced with something much more nicely put together.
- Yslow
Yslow is a great tool. In fact, we have an entire series dedicated to speeding up your web site using Yslow.
- Cacheability
Setting long-lived years cache information for content that does not change often can have a huge impact on your site’s performance .With good caching policies, the browser will save local copies of flies and only fetch them from your server again if the cache expires or the content is modified.
- Bonus: Sysstat
Sysstat collects RAM ,Disk IO and CPU metrics every 10 minutes. Using these metrics , we can often spot areas for performance improvements.