Modem-Friendly?

1. I can say, “Hey, wanna see my website?” and have it loaded on a browser very quickly.
2. I can reach a wider audience without annoying them if the pages load faster.
3. The user gets their hands on content that much more quickly.
4. My 56k connection and I can maintain and check on the site without hassle.
5. I don’t have a large filesize total to upload, should the site be wiped from the server.
6. I can use as little bandwidth from my many gigs as possible.

I used to think that the site would load in 5-8 seconds, but I’m amazed with the loading times I’m getting on my 56k—less than a second in most cases. If the front page has a full-width picture, as it sometimes does, then it will load somewhat slower. Naturally.

Site optimisation procedure

1. Use Apache’s mod_rewrite to make clean URLs which are shorter, thereby adding fewer bytes to a page
2. Remove all linebreaks and formatting from template pages
3. Run all images (even the tiny <1kb ones) through Ignite to cut down their filesizes.
4. Use as few global links (the drop-down and bottom navigation links) as possible to cut down on the size of the template. This means having only the main section links on every page.
5. Use external CSS to remove the need for text-formatting tags, and to maintain a consistent and flexible look throughout the site
6. Remotely link Javascripts to allow them to be cached, and so that I don't bloat the file by having the code on every page.