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) "

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 "

I’ve been trying out the Pandora, an online music station that plays music similar to any artist you type in.  You type in “Beatles” and you will hear a song from the Beatles, then a song from a similar artist.  You can rate the song you hear to get better suggestions.  Cool concept.
 Unfortunately for me, […]

Continue reading " Great Site…Painful FAQ "

New website developers and system administrators sometimes ask the question, “why is our website so slow?”  The answer is often easy: the web server is overloaded, the database is being throttled by slow queries, etc.  But how do you narrow it down and get to those answers?
 
A step by step approach can lead you directly […]

Continue reading " Why Is My Website So Slow? (Part 1) "

Send in URLs of slowly performance websites for analysis and recommendations. 

Continue reading " Under a Microscope "

A good resource for finding network / website / server monitoring software is the one located at the Stanford University SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) website.  Since 1996, Les Cottrell has been cataloging an ever increasing and enormous list of tools for the network and systems admin.  As the list has grown, the design of the […]

Continue reading " Can’t See the Forest for the Trees "

Monitoring Software is prolific in the IT world; however, to the newly initiated sys admin, figuring out what you need for your servers is not nearly as hard as finding out what all of the terminology means.  The problem is that there is no standard terminology that we (the IT world) can use to effectively […]

Continue reading " What Type of Monitoring Software Do You Need? "