In the first part of this series, two main areas that contribute to poor performance were discussed: hardware and software.  Part 2 will discuss other software that can contribute to poor performance.
It’s STILL a software problem
The structure, size, or location of HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc., can make the difference between a page load time […]

Continue reading " Why Is My Website So Slow? (Part 2) "

So you are monitoring your web application, but are you really covering the 3 basic levels that will fully ensure it is available and responsive?  Monitoring of a web application can be as simple as testing a single web page; however, going deeper and covering your bases is better.
 
Level 1: Monitor web server availability - […]

Continue reading " Three Levels of Web Application Monitoring "

Perhaps one of the more important aspects to setting up a monitoring solution is knowing where to monitor from. 
SaaS (Software as a Service) vendors that monitor from PoP (Points of Presence) around the world, offer a way to analyze performance from those locations.  This type of monitoring can be useful for websites that only have […]

Continue reading " A View from the Inside Out "

As a long time user of Outlook, I have rarely had problems.  On my main machine (Windows XP SP2, with 2GB memory), I often discover through Task Manager that Outlook’s process outlook.exe is gobbling up huge amounts of memory which can affect my system’s performance. 
Half of the time, I simply ignore the fact that it […]

Continue reading " Reducing Outlook’s Memory Usage and Increasing Performance "

The UK website http://www.vnunet.com/ is truly slow.  Maybe it is slow from my location in the USA, but some of the users on their forums have complained about the slowness of the site way back in 2006. 
There are plenty of external javascript sources which are probably slowing it down. 
Clicking on the “Forum” link at the top […]

Continue reading " Painfully Slow. But Why? "

In HTML, one can reference a file that contains just javascript by using the javascript tag with the src attribute:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.server.com/myscript.js”></script>
This can have some benefits with regard to performance, except when the file is located on a different server that you have no control over.  Having more than one of these external javascript links […]

Continue reading " External Javascript Kills Website Performance "

Website performance is a reflection of the efficiency and credibility of your company or organization.  From the most technical power users to people just learning how the Internet works, a slow website is a slow website.
Sometimes the best way to avoid poor website performance is to create a checklist of things NOT to do.
First, here […]

Continue reading " 10 Easy Tips to Help You Kill Your Website’s Performance "

Is it Just Me, or is Microsoft.com the SLOWEST site ever?!
I often visit Microsoft’s site for various reasons: get new templates for Word, read some of the forums, download software, etc.  However, as of late, it is getting so painful just to go to some parts of their site.  To be fair, I’m certain that […]

Continue reading " Microsoft’s Website is Loading, Please Wait "

In my last post, I discussed an issue where a connection to a database, via ODBC, is dropped when a network connection is intermittent.
This led me to search the Internet for similar situations and circumstances that other may have encountered. Nothing significant turned up, so I went to the source: Microsoft. Posting on […]

Continue reading " Network Problems Can Cause Adverse Side Effects - Resolution "

Sounds like a commercial from a drug company “Network Problems Can Cause Adverse Side Effects…sleeplessness, chest pain…”, but, I digress.
Let me set the stage of my testbed configuration: On Windows XP SP2, my default connection to the Internet is via wireless express card modem using EV-DO via Verizon Wireless. Let’s call this connection A. […]

Continue reading " Network Problems Can Cause Adverse Side Effects "