I viewed the results of the google webmaster tools and saw where my site performance was being affected by the following:

Enable gzip compression
Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by 251 KB:
The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:

There are 7 CSS files served from nashvilleartgallery.com. They should be combined into as few files as possible:

Details: Save up to 249 KB, 15 requests, 2 DNS lookups

Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by 249 KB:

There are 10 JavaScript files served from nashvilleartgallery.com. They should be combined into as few files as possible:

The domains of the following URLs only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains:


Each one requires combining Javacript and css files etc. I don't know how to do that. How do I do that? Or, what can I do?

__________________

Nobody?

My sites are loading so slowly. I had friends try them on their computers. I need to fix this.

__________________

Just a quick response as I don't have much time right now - hope it helps a bit.

Your site does seem to be loading pretty slowly. Doing the stuff Google suggests will certainly help, but (if it's as slow for you as it is for me) it still won't be very quick. You may want to think about changing host.

The basic idea behind combining files is simple:

- Open all JavaScript or CSS files
- Copy and paste into 1 big file
- Include this big file instead

You can do better than that, though. I'd suggest looking at minify, which is a script that combines and compresses your JavaScript and CSS (getting rid of the comments, spaces, long variable names, etc.) for you. There's a how to guide here. Use Firebug to get all of the URLs for your JS and CSS files. Once you've added them all, you'll need to edit your plugins and theme to remove the old files and include the new, compressed one. (You'll have to do this every time you upgrade, add or remove a plugin too.) There may be more automated ways to do this - no time to look right now. :/

Haven't used these myself, but it looks like there are some good guides and downloads on Gzip compression from Google.

I'd also suggest changing some of your plugins. A lot of the bloat you have is because you're including 3 JavaScript frameworks: MooTools, jQuery and Prototype / Scriptaculous. If you changed your lightbox image viewer from Lightbox (which uses Prototype) to Thickbox or another jQuery one you'd lose about 150k and 4 files. With a bit more work you could change your theme from MooTools to jQuery and get rid of that library too (though this is more effort for less benefit).

__________________
Pole Exercise - Pole dancing evolved

Thank you.

I can see that I have my work cut out for me and a passel more to learn. I know I'd need to back up everything, because I've never done anything like what's required. I'm concerned that I won't put the codes in the right place and blow the sites up. I have next-gen gallery on the art site, along with Lightbox, and I could see where it was a hog. I'm looking for a substitute for these. At the time, I didn't have much of a clue as to needing both or not. I'll look at what you suggested to replace both.

Honestly, this slow loading seems to have just come up. I haven't added any new stuff to the art site in months. You mentioned switching hosts. I checked my account and this is the space I use of what I'm allotted:

Disk space - 378m/250g per month
Bandwidth - 3m/2000g per month

I guess I need to find out their throughput speed? or something.

__________________

I would try to ditch Lightbox because the libraries it needs are big and there are plently of lighter picture viewers that do the same thing. If Next Gen Gallery is useful then obviously keep it - it looks as though it's only adding 2 files and 10kb, which isn't bad at all.

When I opened your site, I got

558kb overall
329kb JS
31kb CSS

Removing Lightbox should roughly halve the JS download size to around 150kb. If you minify the remaining JS and CSS files, you'll probably halve the downloads again to 75kb + 15kb, though that may be more effort than it's worth.

And 550kb isn't that large - it really shouldn't take as long as it does to download. If I were you, I'd try complaining to your host and see if they can fix it or perhaps move you to a different server. If that doesn't work out, I know Jack rates Hostgator quite highly, though I'm sure he can offer you better advice in person.

__________________
Pole Exercise - Pole dancing evolved

What are you using to get those figures? I looked around on the net for some sort of tool to measure download speeds, but I guess I don't know the proper name for the tool.

I will dump Lightbox and see what happens. Thank you for the suggestions.

__________________

I'm just using the Net panel in Firebug. And hope you get it sorted soon.

__________________
Pole Exercise - Pole dancing evolved

I try to go yo your site nashvilleartgallery.com, and it take total 7.12s to load, yes you need to do some thing about that,

If a site has a slow loading time, it is not a user friendly site, visitors will experience idleness and may probably close the site. It is important that a website should be not only search engine friendly but also user friendly.

__________________
Joker loves to play Poker | Online Poker with the lovely Poker Hotties.
Playing their best gambling strategy at the best online casino.

To help test your site's speed, I also like to use Pingdom Tools. It shows which objects are taking the longest to load as well as the sizes of the objects. From there you can see where you may be able to cut back.

__________________
Blogging and Computer Help

Camera Raw versus JPEG
Convert Word Document to PDF for Free

Melancholy, guess what... my host has been having big problems. (you suggested the host could be a problem) For the first time since I've been with them,this week , I experienced downtime, disappearance of my site , slow loading, slow updating...you name it. Prior to this week, I'd never had a problem. I managed to find something on one of their blogs about problems with their database on Feb 3rd, but otherwise no other info.

So since I'd never had a problem, I started searching the internet. I was really surprised to see all the negative comments and complaints about the same things I listed above going back several years. I can't even remember how I came about this host. And I feel badly that I recommended it here.

I've been hurriedly copying my content in between down times. I'm not overly concerned with anything else because my sites are so new. I would just reload a theme if need be.

So I guess I'll be moving to another host at some point. Anybody - would I be entitled to a prorated refund of domain and hosting fees?

__________________

Urg. Good luck with all of the moving. :/

You implied that your domain is registered with the same people who provide your hosting. If that's the case, the first thing I'd do is move it elsewhere - if you have a full backup, you can buy hosting elsewhere and be up and running again in 12 hours (probably less). Then you can play hardball with them (if necessary ) knowing they have zero leverage over your site. (Of course they may be fine about it all, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable complaining and asking for refunds if I knew my host couldn't hold my domain hostage.)

__________________
Pole Exercise - Pole dancing evolved

Good idea. I've been looking into Hostgator.

I haven't changed anything around yet. I called and stayed in hold limbo for too long. I sent an email to support via the control board. I lodged some complaints on their Twitter account where they were advertising for new business. One of my posts just 'disappeared.' And I was nice too. LOL

The status now is faster than ever. Less than 5 seconds to load the site. Two seconds or less to load a page after clicking. I'll hold tight for a minute, 'cause it took several hours to copy my content with the on again, off again loading issues.

Honestly, I only ever recommended them in the first place because I'd never had problems. (that's one of the reasons I was so blue over having to combine JS and CSS files... something I will learn to do in the future.) I will count the days, correction- hours, before this problem resurfaces and make my move then. So at this point, I will give the company the benefit of the doubt, because even at Hostgator's forum, people had complaints about down time, so it seems that's always a possibility. Meanwhile, I will continue getting my content properly saved, so that I can jump off without a lot of work. I would probably leave the active domains there, and transfer the hosting as you suggested. I will place future sites with a different host, because your suggestion makes sense. (I have almost 25 domain names)

__________________