Site Optimization.

Due to a number of readers contacting us over extremely slow load times regarding our main URL – RazorianFly.com – we recently set out to fix the issue by fully optimizing the front page.

Find out how we did ..

So, What did we do?
The first task was to reduce the load time of images. This was remedied by changing the image profiles to play nicely with the web, and reducing the quality of each image ever so slightly. After this we surveyed the load time for a further time, and noticed the way the theme we’re currently using handled videos on the sidebar, was terrible. So we resolved it. A huge “thank you” goes out to David over at David J Moore, as he noticed You Tube videos have to load a default flash template before actually loading the actual video content. Now previously, the sidebar would load this template 4 times and then load the appropriate video content for each object. We’re now taking advantage of another method which no longer requires 4 videos to load on entering the blog.

Previously
The load time for RazorianFly, as pointed out by David was nearing the 17 seconds mark. As of optimizing the front page to the best of our ability, we have reduced that time to just under 7 seconds, and over the next couple of days we expect to get it down even further, to somewhere between 1-4. We realise readers only have so much patience, and we now realise that leaving RazorianFly as it was before optimizing it, was foolish. From now on we will keep load time in mind when publishing articles with large images and demanding java script.

Permanent Changes
As I’m sure you can imagine, in order to achieve this we have thought about elements which are not needed. Today, we are announcing public statistics will no longer be available. Images will now be compressed to play nicely with the web, and Vlogs will no longer appear as a ‘video’ on the main page. Instead, we are going to provide a link to the article containing the said vlog.

We hope these changes and step towards faster load times serve to make your reader experience of RazorianFly much better.

Thanks Again.
Arron