The speed of my site do you agree with my hosting company
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5. Too many images on front page. Over 40. Try cut that down as most is repeated.
6. Noticed your footer is duplicated. Wont affect speed but needs to be cleaned up

7. Server Location: I see your domain is hosted in the US. Not a problem at all but perhaps the pc's the company uses could have an effect and bandwith etc.
8. Are you running on a linux server or widows, out of curiosity?
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i am using sh404sef. i am uising k2 because i was told it was a good component to use but have found it to be a bit of a pain but not much i can do about it now although i would like to. i would love your input on the site as a fellow joomla, as this site has been around for some years now and we were getting over 10,000 a day but then i redone the site trying to make it fresh and better and have come across a lot of problems because of errors that have happened with the hosting company and their advice.
i want to get the site back to 10,000 visitors a day and make it fresh and new
the aim of the site is mainly for women, it is a magazine site for them with a view at 70 women and 30 per cent men.
the site is a magazine site that covers showbiz gossip, lifestyle news, travel reviews and news, fashion, etc and i would like to include a forum on the site.
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Sometimes sh404 can also cause a delay.
Basically, it depends on the version. I personally always use artio, works well for me and dont have speed issues. They also have many compatibility plugins for forums and other components which helps alot :-).
Adding a forum would be great. I prefer to use Kunena which is also has a plugin for Artio

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K2 is great but be wise on how you use it. Keep the images on the front page low. Try and enable a cache that does not disrupt the users experience but enhances the websites loading time for repeat visitors

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5. i have the images on the site to showcase the stories, i was looking at sites like the sun, the people, the mirror etc which showcase the stories by having the images on the front page. any advice on this would be great as i want people to come to my home page and see all the content that is available.
6. yes just noticed this to, will sort out when i am back in england
7. server location. the hosting company is tmd hosting which i was told about, do you feel that i should be looking at a company in the uk then.
8. not sure on this question as the hosting company is tmd hosting and i use a mac at home.
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@.5. Having images is fine but due to slowing down the speed i would at least cut down on the duplicated stories and images

@7.Ideally, yes but i dont believe its a must. Im sure you are getting traffic from the US too. I would however be concerned about the slow loading time though.
@8. Dont worry, just a question

If these tips helped you then feel free to mark this as answered

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Diane, I have taken a look at your site and it seems likely your hosting company is correct. If their reports are showing the site's server is running optimally with no issues, then you should work to optimize your site's code and content. I would share the following suggestions:
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first, I notice the quality of some images are quite low. As a lifestyle magazine form of website, images are very important. It appears some of your images are grainy and stretched. I would recommend only using clear, sharp images especially on your home page.
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next, your sidebar on the home page is almost entirely a duplication of your main content area, including images. I would suggest adding unique content to the sidebar which differs from your main content area, or remove the side bar.
The above two items are mostly quality issues I noticed and not a direct cause of your speed issues. The main problem I am seeing with your site speed is a very poor optimization as represented by a PageSpeed score of 54. Ideally you want you score to be 9x. I recognize you are not a technical person so I'll just share your site is in desperate need of optimization. You should see a dramatic improvement in page load speeds once it is properly optimized.
Also, your site performance would be significantly boosted by using a Content Delivery Network. You are running a fashion site which ideally would be sharing many high quality images to a world-wide audience. The biggest hit on site loading speed will be the time it takes for those images to load. A CDN will copy your images and other content then make it available on numerous servers located throughout the world. When a visitor attempts to load a web page, the images would be loaded from a nearby server which will improve your site's performance.
I checked the ClaireHegarty site and their site is actually poorly optimized as well, but they have hardly any images so the negative impacts are not felt. The FemaleFirst.co.uk site does use images more similarly to your site and their PageSpeed score is a 76.
A tool you can use to measure page load speeds for a given site from around the world: http://www.alertra.com/spotcheck_do
TL;DR - Your web server seems fine. You need a developer to spend a day on your site optimizing it with a goal of at least a 8x PageSpeed score. Additionally I recommend using a CDN. Neither of these suggestions are expensive (relatively speaking) and both should eliminate your speed problems.
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hi can you please pm me and give me some tips on the following message. my budget is nearly nil now and i need to do this myself but not sure how to do it, so any advice on how to do it to speed up the site would be great. i will sort out the images when i get back and will sort out the side panel. what i was trying to do with the side panel was like the sun newspaper site where they have the latest news appear on the side panel as well as on the main page, so yes it does appear twice, but if you feel this is bad then i will change this.
i would love to receive lots of advice from you as a joomla expert as i seriously need help to sort the site out, so any advice would be great.
the below advice on how to do this would be great
The above two items are mostly quality issues I noticed and not a direct cause of your speed issues. The main problem I am seeing with your site speed is a very poor optimization as represented by a PageSpeed score of 54. Ideally you want you score to be 9x. I recognize you are not a technical person so I'll just share your site is in desperate need of optimization. You should see a dramatic improvement in page load speeds once it is properly optimized.
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WOuld it be possible tp pm me with some more advice on how to optimise the site to speed up the site. many thanks for your help stehano
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The issues on your site are not specific to Joomla but general in nature. Optimizing images, implementing a CDN, setting up caching, compressing files, using sprites to serve images, etc.
None of these steps are particularly time consuming but they are technical in nature. There is not any easy to read article I can direct you to which will help a non-technical person be able to implement this changes. Each requires a good understanding of various elements of web design and programming.
I went ahead and sent you a PM. In short, you can install PageSpeed and YSlow, use them to analyze your site and they offer initial guidance on what issues need to be addressed and what steps should be taken.
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Sure, just pm'd you yesterday

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One additional note Diane. I am confident your web server itself is working properly and the issue is the site optimization. I performed a test of loading your site on the Alerta link I provided in the initial reply and most locations load your site in 10+ seconds. When I repeat the same test with your robots.txt URL (http://www.in2town.co.uk/robots.txt) the maximum load time is HongKong which is less then 1 second.
Your site does not have a 404 page so I used the emptiest page I could find for an additional test (http://www.in2town.co.uk/Discount-Shopping). That page's worst loading time in the US and UK was still under 6 seconds. While that's not good, it is much better then your home page loading time. This again indicates your issues are related to optimization of your site.