[thelist] Website speed smart practices (was gzip and far future expires header )

[Bob Meetin]

Well there have been a couple more interesting developments with the 
website speed thread.  My website is hosted in a common shared hosting 
arrangement, which of course introduces another variable with what's 
going on simultaneously with other websites.  Occasionally I will see a 
first load of the home page in under 4 seconds, but other times 8-9.  
Not awful but not great.  Then of course all other pages load relatively 
fast after that. 

I inquired to the hosting service how many other websites were hosted 
but they were not up to sharing that info, which I expected.  To switch 
to a dedicated server the cost would climbs to about $175/month.  Too 
much at this time considering performance is acceptable.

The other really factor that I see is browser.  On my Linux PC I have 
loaded Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany and Seamonkey for testing.  
The other browsers almost all load faster than Firefox.  Epiphany will 
commonly load the home page in about 2 seconds as opposed to Firefox's 
3-4.  I've looked at the FF settings but don't see anything that should 
account for this.  Disabling the YSlow and other toolbars has negligible 
to incidental effect.

-- 
Bob Meetin
www.dottedi.biz
303-926-0167

Hook up with me at www.Twitter.com/bobmeetin or www.Twitter.com/dottedi, Facebook, LinkedIn, or catch my blog at www.dottedi.biz/blog.php

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