Website Speed Testing Tools

[casper434]

I have been experimenting with a number of plugins to speed up the loading of my wordpress site and find that website speed testing tools are all over the map when it comes to results. Even the same tool can produce vastly different results. Does anyone have experience with one that is both dependable and consistent?

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Brett - when I have been optimizing the loading of one of my wordpress sites I have found YSlow is effective. Have you used it?

[casper434]

Tried a tool called Gtmetrix that provides a yslow input

[Matt-Williamson]

I found YSlow helped me effectively optimize the loads speed there is so much that you can do to help you with this. Hows the optimization going? My tools of choice were firebug and yslow - I also installed pagespeed from Google Webmaster Tools when doing this work.

[casper434]

thanks Matt. Will give it a try

Brett

[ThompsonPaul]

The trick with sitespeed testing, Brett, is that you need to approximate as closely as possible the experience a real user will have.

By far the best tool for this in my experience is webpagetest.org.

It uses actual browser rendering for it's test, not a synthetic imitation. it also allows a couple of other critical customizations:

• select which browser you want to test your site with (you'll be surprised at the differences! Use you Google Analytics to tell you which browser majority of your visitors use)
• Select what sort of connection speed to test from (eg slower DSL which will also mimic phone users or faster cable connection)
• select a specific city to test from (this will have major effect - e.g. you should test from the San Jose location which is much more realistic for your Comox location than an east coast or southern US test would be)
• run a mobile-specific test
• shows both first load and repeat visit (particularly tests caching effectiveness)
• provides a waterfall view so you can exactly which elements may be causing issues

The app also provides full Google Page Speed results/recommendations and a number of other trouble-shooting tools.

GTMetrix provides a number of these, but doesn't have the same flexibility/customization available, I've found. (Though it is using a Vancouver-based server for your test from here (Alberta) which is useful.)

Note that you will get different results each time though, if you're using a real-life tool. That's due to differences in network load and latency and even different load on your server each time tested.

Finally, below is a screenshot demonstrating why you absolutely need to use a real-life test, not just synthetic Page Speed or YSlow scores - the site has a beautiful synthetic score yet a disastrous load time (due to server issues)

Paul

rDQjD.jpg