Some webhosts slower than others?

[DrWilloughby]

I use Yahoo Small Business for my webhosting. We are about to launch our new product/company site, but it seems to be loading very slowly, despite having the total file size quite small. In comparison, our site is smaller than thesims2.com, but the sims site loads in three times as fast. Ours is half the size of puzzlepirates.com, but it loads in half as fast.

We do have some streaming flash elements on the page, and we access a couple little rss feeds and some very minor database hits as well, but I can't see these causing the slowness.

Could the problem be caused by Yahoo just being slow? I know next to nothing about the architecture of the internet, so any help is appreciated.

Incidentally, our site Qatfish (in sig) is very slow too, but I've always assumed thats because it was hitting the database hard. Any suggestions?

Link to the site (http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/newsite)

[Pyabo]

Could the problem be caused by Yahoo just being slow?

Yes, this is completely possible.

Not sure what to tell you as far as improving the situation though... Probably your best bet is to move to a dedicated server (but you already have that right???) at one of the top-tier providers like RackSpace or The Planet. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for.

[cliffski]

I've read in various places (i am not an expert) that loading multiple external elements from different domains can be a major cause of slowing down your site load.

Try this:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

[DrWilloughby]

Update: I've asked a few more people to look at it, they all report that it is slow (even on the EA hub). We copied the site to a different domain (a personal domain) and it was three times as fast. So it's not the content.

But I called Yahoo support and his tests had it coming in under 2 seconds. The Yahoo support guy is the only person that has had it come in quickly. It would be easy to be sarcastic about this, but I believe him that it was fast from his computer.

We also tried removing the flash content from the site and it still loads slowly. This also discounts the idea that the site is slow because of external data - the only external data that we access is the weather channel rss feed, which is embedded in flash.

I wish I could base this on more than just intuition, but it sure feels like the site is loading slow because of our webhost. But Yahoo is rated very highly in terms of speed. Something is fishy...

[DFG]

Sounds like some sort of router problem down the line that is causing problems. If the Yahoo guy is very near the server, the connection doesn't have to hit that main routes before he can access it yielding a fast response. If there is a router problem somewhere down the line, he wouldn't experience it but everyone else would.

I have had problems with slow loading lately and it has been for several reasons: an Apache process was running that shouldn't, a cgi script was hanging, log files were too full etc. Ironically, I need to submit another request at this very moment because the site is loading slow again.

[DrWilloughby]

ha, just called yahoo support again but they can't help me because their internet is down.

[DrWilloughby]

Probably your best bet is to move to a dedicated server (but you already have that right???) at one of the top-tier providers like RackSpace or The Planet. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for.
We're not actually on a dedicated server... but when i tracert other sites not on dedicated servers I still get much better avg ping time.

My current thinking is that it's either something else on the server that's eating up bandwidth (solved by moving servers or moving to a dedicated server), or a router issue like Jim said. Though Yahoo tech support is in Texas, and while they said it was very fast, my Texas friend I asked still experienced slow loading times.

[jankoM]

I remember that qatfish loaded really really slow (I noticed it many times) a couple of months back... now I don't visit it that much and today it loaded with normal speed - but back then it was abnormally slow. I think loading from many domains is not so good at speeds

firefox webdeveloper toolbar gets this on your site http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/blog/

One thing that is a little strange maybe is that you have 180kB of html. When I went looking at your page source I saw another thing that really doesn't seem optimal ... you have this javascript for every star which is around 86 times and is in my undereducated oppinion totally useles.


<!-- Parse return from psr.class.php
var1 = "psr_rss=1&amp;psr_idurl='http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/141/is-sony-losing-their-shirt-on-each-ps3/'&amp;pointsSum=0"
var2 = var1.split("&amp;")
var3 = var2[var2.length-1]
var4 = var3.split("=")

if(var4[1]>=20){
document.write("<div id='star_red'><span class='text_light'>"+var4[1]+"</span></div>");
} else if(var4[1]>=10) {
document.write("<div id='star_orange'><span class='text_light'>"+var4[1]+"</span></div>");
} else if (var4[1]>=4) {
document.write("<div id='star_yellow'><span class='text'>"+var4[1]+"</span></div>");
} else if (var4[1]<4) {
document.write("<div id='star_white'><span class='text'>"+var4[1]+"</span></div>");
}

-->


Let's see you create a link on serverside and that link has pointsSum=X at the end and then you output that link to js and at the same time output the javascipt code that will then parse the link to get to that value and then depending on that value set right id of a div....

where do I begin...
1)if you for some reason want js to make that star (I don't see why) why don't you just define additional js variable on server so you don't have to parse the url to get it
2)this code repeats (is in html) 86 times... why don't you make a js function for it?
3)why use js to set up id of that div if you can do it on server much faster and with smaller html output?
4)you use id for stars... <div id="star_white"> so you have multiple elements with same id which is wrong ... you should use class for that

best wishes

[DrWilloughby]

Janko- Thanks, though we're really concerned with our new product page (link in the first post). Qatfish is full of crap tech and needs a lot of attention, but our new site loads very slow too, and the tech is clean.

[jankoM]

well I can't tell you anything "smart" about that page.. but because I am such a good camper I copied front page to 3 of my servers
this one is in slovenia: http://itmmetelko.com/tests/Pocketwatch%20Games.htm
dreamhost (slow ussually): http://klik-klik.net/tests/Pocketwatch%20Games.htm
I couldn't upload to my main (the best) server because I can't login now

this is pure html so no php processing time ... also look at this
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.pocketwatchgames.com/newsite/

//edit... hmm.. I think I didn't do anything wrong when I copied them... anyway... tell me when you look at them so I delete them

[DrWilloughby]

Cool, they do seem faster, confirms that it's our server or router. Prob gonna switch over to GoDaddy and then get a virtual dedicated server when needed. THanks a ton, feel free to take them down.

[jankoM]

removed... glad I could help. venture arctic looks grat on video

[Drake]

We're not actually on a dedicated server... but when i tracert other sites not on dedicated servers I still get much better avg ping time.
I just plugged your domain into this tool (http://www.seologs.com/ip-domains.html) that soniCron posted in another thread, and it returns 797 domains that resolve to the same IP. I am not an expert, but that just seems... really bad. :eek: For one point of comparison, my current shared server hosts a total of 22 domains.

[DrWilloughby]

Wow, incredibly interesting. I wonder if I can request to be moved. I'll update...

[tolworthy]

I just plugged your domain into this tool (http://www.seologs.com/ip-domains.html) that soniCron posted in another thread
What an amazing tool! Thanks! My domain comes up with just seven, so if this is accurate I'm very happy. Yay Dreamhost.

[tisoft_media]

What an amazing tool! Thanks! My domain comes up with just seven, so if this is accurate I'm very happy. Yay Dreamhost.

The tool is not very accurate. I tested it for my server (a dedicated one, where I know which domains are hosted on it) and it doesn't list all domains, that point to it. Additionally it lists a msn.com domain, for my server and I think I would know it, if I would be hosting stuff from msn...

[UnknownGuy]

Mine says 471. :P