Since April 2010, Google has incorporated page speed and loading times into it’s search ranking. Whilst this may not be a huge factor in the rankings it’s something to be aware of. This means optimizing web sites has never been more important not only for search results but also for user’s benefit.

Below are some of the tools I found useful and worth sharing.

Tools

There are some common tools provided across different services to help diagnose page load times and areas which can be improved. It’s advisable to use several different services to check the load times. Most tools may cover the same areas but may suggest different improvements. Also this ensure a full coverage of checks performed.

Report

A report usually lists all the checks that are performed by the tool and usually state the state (whether it’s good, medium or bad) and possible improvements if any.

Net Waterfall Chart

A common graph to show loading sequence and times for a specific page. This is useful to see what elements on a page loaded in what order and what areas can loaded in concurrent.

Browsers & Location

Load times can depend on the browser and the location of the test server. Browser load times depend on the engine that is used. If there are scripts, external files Adobe Flash elements may increase the load time and also depends on the efficiency of the browser. Location wise, close the tool is geologically generally improves the load time. It’s a good idea to try different settings to see what the differences are but as a guideline try Google’s Chrome browser, USA server and your web servers country to see the differences.

LoadsIn

From the beginning LoadsIn looks like a very simple tool. Enter the website URL and it shows the time taken for the page to load. I believe by default it selects Safari as the default browser and a USA server to perform the speed test but this can be changed on the results page. LoadsIn also provides a network diagram but it lists all the different tests performed on the same site using different location and browser. This makes comparing the different parameters very easy and access to the net graph is available for each test.

LoadIn has a paid feature called Monitor. This allows a real-time preview of the site loading with a stop watch to show how the page loads. I did not try this feature but it looks promising.

Slowcop

Slowcop puts a big emphasis on the net graph but it also has a report below it which shows errors and improvements.

Google Page Speed

One of the best source to get information on page load because it comes from Google. It generates a report describing issues and improvements ranked by importance using RAG status.

Pingdom DNS Health

Whilst this is not dedicated to page load times it is important the DNS entries are correct and working. DNS may redirect users the long way round to a site or contain errors which would impact access to the site. Pingdom also has a page test but it only contains the net graph which can be gained from other tools.

Summary

Information is power and the tools above are designed to help guide a web master or server administrator to decrease loading times. Some improvements are easier to implement than others and there are always those which are out of your control such as content from an external site. For example Twitter widget, Last.fm playlist, etc.

Using site speed in web search ranking

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To add an Identi.ca account, go to the settings (spanner icon in the top right corner) and Accounts. Click on the Add New Account button. The bottom half of the window will show all the types of accounts that can be added to TweetDeck. Select Twitter and enter the Identi.ca username and password in the “Twitter” username and password field. Click on the Advanced Options link below the password field to reveal more options. In the Twitter Base URL text box, enter http://identi.ca/index.php/api/ and check the details by clicking on the Verify Details button. This will either add or show an error if the details are incorrect. Lastly, save the settings.

How To Use TweetDeck With Identi.ca [w/ Adobe Air Ubuntu Installation Instructions]

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Google Analytics

This is a must have monitoring feature. All that is required is a Google account (with Analytics) and copying and pasting the code into your website. With modern CRMs, the code can be written once to a template and every time a page is severed, it will be included to track web statistics to all the pages using the same template. Analytics will help identify users and associated information such as the origin of the user, the OS and browser they are using and more. This really does give a good indication of who and what type of people visit your site and how many people over a given period. Go http://www.google.com/analytics/ and sign up for an account.

Webpage Test

Tests the loading times of a first view (no cached data) and repeat views (viewing with cached data). It gives a good indication of how and which parts are taking a long time to load. For example I found that the Twitter “widget” is the longest part to load but it queries Twitter’s website to get the last tweet I made. There is nothing I can do to improve that except for removing it. Webpage Test also breaks down into details how long each external elements takes to load which includes external javascript and CSS files, images and iframes. Webpage test is very easy to use and it can be found at http://www.webpagetest.org At least one speed test should be performed to test page load times but there are other tools around which give different information and different types of load tests.

mod_pagespeed

PageSpeed is a Google made Apache module which increases page load times by changing a few things on the server side before it is sent to the client/browser. These include minifying files to adding expiration and caching settings. The nature of the module means it needs to be installed on the server side or the hosting provider needs to support it for example DreamHost. Enabling the module, dannytsang.co.uk went from a loading time of 13 seconds to 8 seconds using Chrome and with a clean cache. PageSpeed takes out a lot of manual Apache configuration settings out and does it automatically. The module is open source and can be found at http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com

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The new version includes:

• Offline data storage – If it was unable to save the data to the database it will save it file and later re-insert the data to be viewed online again.
• Removed Twitter support due to change in authentication protocol.
• Improved stability.

I’m hoping to bring back Twitter support once oAuth is supported and released in python-twitter but I may have to look for an alternative library if the project takes too long.

Offline storage is good but limited. I plan to enhance this to make it more robust in future releases.

More general tweaks and fixes as I go along.

Grab a copy at http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/

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I use the Twitter Tools plugin on WordPress to tweet my blog posts as well as showing my Tweets in my side bar. The recent change to oAuth and disabling basic authentication by Twitter has made the process slightly more cumbersome to get working. Having said that the Twitter Tools settings page does a good job of guiding users to setting it up correctly.

The problem I had was that it wasn’t getting the API keys but at the end where it says Connect to Twitter After pressing it a blank page would show.

Solution – cURL

Install PHP cURL. This is very simple:
sudo apt-get install php5-curl
Enable the plugin in Apache and reload it to make the changes take affect:
sudo a2enmod php-curl
sudo service apache2 reload or for older versions:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Twitter Tools Support

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I have finally made the jump from the iPhone to an Android OS phone. Whilst the OS 4.0 from Apple preview event looked good, there was no sign or mention that they will change the App store and it’s draconian approval process.

HTC vs. Google

I was undecided between the HTC Desire and the Google Nexus One. There two phones run on a similar platform but there are subtle differences such as noise cancellation and track ball on the Nexus vs. Sense UI and an optical track (ball).

The decision was made to go the Desire because:

• It was out in the UK before the Nexus
• Proper physical buttons instead of the touch sensitive buttons

Unboxing

The phone came in a very small package but still managed to fit most of the items I’d expected to see to come with the phone e.g earphones, documents, etc.

I do have to say there was no manual that came with the phone but it was more like a quick start guide. On the first start up of the phone there was another quick introduction but nothing substantial for those who like to read the manual.

Replacing iPhone

After having an Apple iPhone 3G for just over 18 months it was apparent what I missed and what I loved about the new phone.

Pros:

• No download limit – Previously there was a 10mb download limit from the App store or iTunes over the mobile carrier. With Android there is no such limit.
• Removable battery – Not that I plan to change the battery often but it’s nice to know I can.
• Auto focus camera – It bugged me that the iPhone camera did not have macro mode but the HTC Desire even has face recognition.
• Micro USB – A standard connector so I do not have to hunt for an Apple specific one to power the device
• USB mode – Ability to set the mode when it is connected to the computer e.g charge, Sync, Tether…
• Tethering – Ability to tether via USB out of the box (except for the need to download the USB drive in Windows)
• Multitasking – The ability to run multiple threads at a time in the background has it’s pros and cons. For the good parts it’s been everything the iPhone should have done with the push notification. I was getting RSS to update at regular intervals so when I open the app it had them already cached, sending tweets can be done with the app closed so you are free to do other things once the send button is pressed and even Facebook allowed uploading of pictures in another thread!

Cons:

• Headphone profile – Connecting a headphone/earphone to the 3.5mm jack does not change the volume to what it was set to before when a jack was connected.
• Battery life – I was able to make it through the whole day usually without the iPhone running out of power but the Desire does if I play any games for a long period.
• Lack of Apps – Particular high quality games such as Popcap games. There are some good apps but nothing near the amount the iPhone has.
• Multitasking – Apple was correct when they said it would use more power if they enabled multitasking and with the HTC Desire I saw the side effects. This had lead to reducing the amount of background updates and notifications as well as killing some of the other watchdog threads in Twitter and Facebook clients.
• Conference calls – There’s no option to allow more one or more people to an existing call.

The phone does have conference calling function but it is not displayed on screen during a call. Pressing the menu button reveals this function

Observations:

• Apps are smaller – Android apps seems to be smaller but that may be because the iPhone Apps may use more custom graphics.
• Headphone jack detection – Whilst connecting a headset does not lower the volume on the Android device, it still stops the music play back if the jack is removed from the port.
• Case – Whilst both the Apple iPhone and the HTC Desire did not come with a case it would have been a nice touch like the HTC HD2.

Personal Preference

I still prefer the Apple iPhone’s keyboard but that may be because I was use to using it the Apple way. The typing of the keys felt slightly less accurate but I’m getting better at it and the spelling corrections are not as well done but the words in the dictionary are much better because it contains some odd words not in the dictionary.

HTC Sense UI does add some good integration from third party companies such as Facebook and Twitter integration to the contacts. The “People” or contacts page allows for linking and unlinking from Facebook profiles. Once linked it will associate people’s profile pictures to the contact on the phone.

There are caveats to this like some profile pictures have really low resolution so it gets blown up on screen when the person calls and also HTC has duplicated some of the functionalities the Android OS provides already for this integration. For example HTC has it’s own version of Facebook application which allows it to link to the peoples page but the non HTC Facebook app also has to be installed in order for it to work. This means there are two apps which appear in the programs list for Facebook.

Summary

I am happy with the trade offs for the phone but I hope the continous improvements made by both Google and HTC will come to fix some of the issues I have raised over time.

In terms of the battery problem I do not think there is anything that can be done without a re-design.

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energy@home project page

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As you can see the value for total energy used is currently way off but it’s a preview of what’s to come.

There are two options: tweet hourly summary and daily summary. These can be turned on and off. I am using python-twitter library which does not use oauth authentication so the client description comes up as API which is not nice.

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