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Site speed essentials

Sannse Sannse October 28, 2010
Speedy!
Lemmykoopa24Added by Lemmykoopa24
A key part of being a successful website is to maintain a system that's fast and reliable. It's well known that the quicker the site speed, the more likely it is that a visitor will stay and explore. For example, Google's algorithm takes site speed into consideration when they decide which search results get displayed higher on the page.

On Wikia we've seen this in action -- the longer it takes a page to load, the higher the exit rate. To prevent this, we've taken a number of measures to keep our page load times low across 170,000 wikis. Some of the recent changes we've made:

  • We've combined CSS calls to our servers, so they are loaded all at once rather than as separate files.
  • Buttons on the interface are now loaded as a combined image, helping them to load faster. We then use CSS to split the image for display.
  • Spotlights are now also loaded together rather than individually -- more saved calls to the server!
  • Some images now only load after you've started to scroll down the page (including spotlights and the photos module). For anyone that doesn't scroll down that far, we don't need to waste time loading those images.
  • We are working to reduce our use of the Yahoo JavaScript framework, and now only load it on pages that are directly using it.

Maintaining and improving site speed is an important task for our engineering and operations department. And plays an important role in our product development process, with new features optimized to balance functionality and loading speed. For the future: we are turning our attention to improving the geographic reach of our servers. We are planning to place new servers in the New York/Boston area, which will mean faster speed for all of our visitors on the East Coast of the US. We already have servers in San Jose, Iowa, Frankfurt and London. (Here's a bit of magic: )

As a wiki admin, there are some things you may want to consider to keep your wiki fast:

  • How big is the background image used in your theme? If it's a large image, this can greatly increase the loading time of your wiki.
  • What is the size of other images you use? Is it possible to compress them before adding them to Wikia?
  • What extensions and JavaScript do you have on your main page? Too many of these, or some particular ones, will slow down your site.

Have other ideas or suggestions? Please feel free to post them below for everyone's benefit. We hope that you have a fast (and fun) experience on Wikia!

Want to receive updates on the latest Staff blog posts? Then click here to follow this blog.

Retrieved from "http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sannse/Site_speed_essentials"
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248 comments


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  • 173.202.145.175

    Wikia is current lagging an INSANE amount for me. I can't log in, wikis are barley loading anything other then text, and some wikis won't even load that! It's not my computer because other sites load fine and it's the same on my nookcolor. And it's all of them, to varying degrees. No wikis load more then the text and some images. But with some, I get an error message and it won't load anything. They worked fine a few days ago. I don't know if this is affecting anyone else, but I'd really like to be able to use wikis again.

    by A Wikia contributor
  • BBilge

    In spite of your best efforts Wikia is actually terrible at loading times particularly with all the garbled mismanagement of javascript, tag soup, styles and extensions.

    by BBilge
    history
  • Roberto1205

    Me too

    by Roberto1205
  • Lemmykoopa24

    Guys, I changed it back.

    I mean, we all had a good laugh, right? Plus, I can just do it next week.

    by Lemmykoopa24
  • Arend

    Wikia's plans backfired by my responses (not sure if all true, though)Edit

    • "We've combined CSS calls to our servers, so they are loaded all at once rather than as separate files."

    That means you're combining multiple small files to one massive file. In that case, we must wait as fast, with the difference that we can't see even bits of the layout until done loading. That is because, small files are done loading faster than big files.

    • "Buttons on the interface are now loaded as a combined image, helping them to load faster. We then use CSS to split the image for display."

    Same as above: combining small pics to a big one.

    • "Spotlights are now also loaded together rather than individually -- more saved calls to the server!"

    Same as above, again.

    • "Some images now only load after you've started to scroll down the page (including spotlights and the photos module). For anyone that doesn't scroll down that far, we don't need to waste time loading those images."

    And if we WANT to see the images? That makes us waiting as long as when it just loads at once.

    • "We are working to reduce our use of the Yahoo JavaScript framework, and now only load it on pages that are directly using it."

    The New Wikia Look probably uses JavaScript too. JavaScript is a scripting programming language, used for interactive features on webpages. Collapsed sidebars, slideshows, etc. ARE interactive features you know?

    by Arend
    • Devilmanozzy

      I agree completely.

      by Devilmanozzy
    • Airhogs777

      So what you're saying is, the site is 250% faster and everyone should use it, because Sannse said so.

      by Airhogs777
    • 81.59.12.49

      No. I said whatever they wanna do, or whatever they did, did not help to make it a hair faster, or even slower!

      I don't know what came up in your mind to think otherwise?

      by A Wikia contributor
    • 81.59.12.49

      Comment by Arend, btw.

      by A Wikia contributor
    • M.mendel

      Arend, several small files take much longer to load than a large file with the same data, because each transmission has "overhead", i.e. it takes time and data to set up and complete; this is the data that is saved by combining small files.

      Javascript is used on all Wikia pages, and the newer jQuery framework is loaded on all pages as well. The old YUI framework is still required for some extensions, so Wikia used to load that as well -- and not loading it when it's not used is indeed quite a savings.

      So generally, these are goo dsteps to take; the problem is that Wikia also adds "features" that make pages load more slowly, e.g. using attribution avatars everyplace, which means one server call each, completely negating the "combined call" savings Sannse mentions for most pages.

      by M.mendel
    • Airhogs777

      Too bad they can't save spotlights in your cache. Kind of ruins the diversity of results, though.

      by Airhogs777
    • M.mendel

      Well, each spotlight has its own image URL, so in theory it is quite possible to save these in the browser cache.

      by M.mendel
  • Bunai82

    Having Facebook on every page causes slow loading.

    by Bunai82
  • Lemmykoopa24

    M: I made the picture better. It's really fast and it will help users get around easier.

    Plus, I got paid to change the picture. Also, Lol.

    by Lemmykoopa24
  • M.mendel

    It just struck me that there's a pattern:

    • Wikia: Look, we made the skin better! -- Everyone else: "It's worse!"
    • Wikia: Look, we made the site faster! -- Everyone else: "Why is it so slow this weekend?"

    Honestly, at this point if Wikia said they made the sun come up earlier in the morning I'd be worried. ;)

    by M.mendel
  • Lemmykoopa24

    I knew Wikia would never listen to us, so I took the liberty of revealing the real image.

    by Lemmykoopa24
  • Lemmykoopa24

    That new image is great, it will also help users get around easier.

    I was getting paid to do it. Remind you of anyone, Wikia?


    The rest you faithful Oasis haters, don't be surprised if I'm banned by tomorrow (or a couple hours), my friends.

    by Lemmykoopa24
  • Sarah Manley
    Hi All, Over the weekend we had some issues with our servers so you may have seen some slowness - particularly with images loading. It is all fixed now, and we are sorry for the inconvenience. As many of you know, the best place to report bugs is to Special:Contact. Thanks!
    by Sarah Manley
  • Airhogs777

    Every other time I tried to load something yesterday, all that loaded was the Wikia bar and the background.

    by Airhogs777
  • Henry Medals

    Is there any particular reason why the images aren't loading?

    by Henry Medals
  • ILmaster

    This made my loading worse... I used to be able to load about 4-9 pages at a time at any wikia at a good speed, now I can't even load one without waiting a while. I'm stuck staring at the background with the top bar with only the first three things (Wikia logo, start a wiki button and the entertainment tab).

    by ILmaster
  • KP Blue

    Yeah, this update that supposedly made things faster is just bogging us down. I can't load certain pages, and the little bar along the bottom, the sidebar, the "like" icon, and the drop-down menus don't work unless I click the "cancel loading" button on my browser. Please release a fix for this. And if you're going to say "Get a better ISP", go to hell.

    by KP Blue
  • M.mendel

    Another change that made the site speed slower is the addition of lots of ajax calls on the Oasis skin. Whenever there is a high chance of getting 503 server errors, and ajax call failing can hold up the page loading on some browsers. Now consider that every dropdown on the Wikia navbar at the top has an ajax call, and you see how this increased the number of requests per page, and made the page take longer to load (and possibly also made it break more easily).

    by M.mendel
  • KP Blue

    Yeah, this update that supposedly made things faster is just bogging us down. I can't load certain pages, and the little bar along the bottom, the sidebar, the "like" icon, and the drop-down menus don't work unless I click the "cancel loading" button on my browser. Please release a fix for this. And if you're going to say "Get a better ISP", go to hell.

    by KP Blue
  • 75.4.219.241

    Second comment - my latest comment (the one about, ironically enough, nothing loading)....hasn't loaded. I'm going to take note of how long until this blog page finishes loading.

    • Well, it's been ten minutes - not done yet. Also, I can't help but notice the one thing that isn't loading - Wikia Spotlight. And not just here.
    • Well, it's been thirty minutes, still not done yet. Again, Wikia Spotlight is the only thing that hasn't loaded.

    Well, good luck with whatever is wrong - I would like to edit again sometime, or at least sign it.

    by A Wikia contributor
  • 75.4.219.241

    Since I can't log in, comment on forums, or even load forums (or anything else besides blog entries, apparently), I may as well mention it here - Nothing Is Loading. If it helps, the navigation bar at the top loaded as far as "Entertainment"....and nothing else. I would sign in, but - surprise, surprise - the login page won't load either.

    Oh, and preview doesn't work either.

    Also, if it helps to note, this page hasn't stopped "loading" yet - that's a good ten minutes. And what for? Wikia Spotlight. Yeah. That's really important to me. Even more important than editing. Or signing in. Or anything.

    I'm usually less annoyed about something, but then, I'm usually able to log in.

    by A Wikia contributor
  • Secundomia

    The reason they cut MonoBook was because the wanted it to be easier to get from Facebook to wikia (more site views, more money), they wanted to make it easier to get from Wiki to Wiki while promoting wikis like crazy (more site views, more money). Need I continue?

    by Secundomia

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