By the way on a sidenote, either your site has Optimize CSS Delivery enabled or Merge JavaScript enabled. One of the two is making it load slower than it should. (I am thinking you enabled Optimize CSS Delivery)

This is how your site loaded on my browser...

Wow, that is terrible. I will go check right away. Thank you for letting me know.
Sean

In the Pro Options tab I have Optimize CSS Delivery = OFF
In the Plug-in tab I have the Combine JavaScript Files = Yes. Do you think that might be the problem? I will ask the JCH Optimize developer about this.
I did do all of this work with JCH-Optimize and JotCache to try to speed my site which users are complaining about because it is too slow. :-( So, my making it slower is certainly not a good thing!

Well, I will tell you from my experience, I use JCH-Optimize Pro too, it is great! However, do not blindly enable everything and do not take speed tests for their word. Personally, I found that disabling Merge JavaScript made my site faster, as instead of loading one big file, it could load the small ones on demand. I suggest you try disabling it and see if it improves anything, for me it definitely did. I find that as EasySocial already has a very big main JS file, merging it with all the others on the site is a bad idea. My ideal settings: Optimum settings but disable Merge JavaScript

Also, I am not sure if using Sprite Generator is a good idea in your case, as I believe you use a CDN which should take care of improving the speed of the pictures in a less resource heavy way. That said, I haven't used it enough.

Also talk to your host about adding APC as a caching option, that reaaally helped my site out... more so than JotCache, I don't use JotCache anymore. Again, that is how it was on my site

Thank you very much for this advice. I will try it in the morning. I have optimized three sites with JCH Optimize and the other two are quite a bit faster. So, your explanation makes sense. But, I will try them all out as you suggest in the morning when I am not so tired. And, I will google for APC. Not sure what that is. I host with CloudAccess.net. I will ask them. You have given me plenty to think about!!!

Sean

You are very welcome, keep me updated. I really think that disabling Merge JavaScript and using a better server side caching option like APC or Memcached will help you out greatly. (For me APC was best, but Memcached is arguably the more popular choice)... also remember that JotCache and Joomla System Cache only work for guests, not for logged in users.

Currently you are doing too many optimizations joomla side and not enough hosting side. By doing so many joomla side you end up putting a load on the server, remember that every optimization you add server side needs to be calculated and executed and this can sometimes add a delay. By doing optimizations hosting side, there is very little delay because they are calculated and executed much earlier and automatically.

Also, if you really really want to optimize things... consider switching from Apache to NGINX with Php5-fpm. From File Cache to APC or Memcached, and finally from JCH Optimizer Pro to mod_pagespeed. That way you move all your optimizations to server side. That said, changing all of that can be a big process, and I doubt your host would be able to accomodate all of that.... so start with APC or Memcached which is easy to add, and then move from there


Oh and on a sidenote, I believe you use a CDN, now CDNs I am less experienced with, but if you disable Merge JavaScript you could then add the main EasySocial JS file to the CDN as it is a static file. Stackideas has been smart to change the name of the main JS file every edition so that you do not risk having an out of date JS file in your CDN. Currently it is called easysocial-1.2.16.static.min.js

I have a feeling that when the sprite generator is running it's also caching items that may mess up the existing css structure.

I just visited your site. I can tell you have improved a lot of things performance wise. I also see you are using LazyLoad for images. What plugin are you using? LazyLoad for Joomla or JA LazyLoad?

Jannik,
Thank you for pointing me to Too Many Files. I will try to get to it over this long weekend and try it out. I am very hopeful that this will make a big improvement for me. Regarding LazyLoad, I am using a JoomlaBamboo template and they are built on the T3 framework, originally from JoomlArt. So, my guess is that JA LazyLoad would be what is being used. However, I do not see any plugins with that name in my list of plugins.

JoomlaBamboo might have their own lazyload: jQuery Lazyload script

If you are running Apache you can use PageSpeed on your server to optimize the browsers rendering of images as follows (edit to your .htaccess at your own risk)

##

## Mod_Pagespeed

##

<IfModule pagespeed_module>

   ModPagespeed on  

   ModPagespeedEnableFilters lazyload_images

</IfModule>

There are many other filters you can utilize as well. As pointed out elsewhere on the forum, these optimizations are implemented as a custom filter in the PageSpeed module, which is executed when the HTTP server serves the website assets (i.e. before it gets to your customers browser).

Jannik Laursen.
I finally installd Too Many Files and was able to get the home page down from 96 requests to 35 requests. It went from 1.4 MB to 703 KB. So, that was all good. Interestingly the site took more seconds to load but that appears to be caused by the CDN. ODD indeed. I get my fastest load time if I turn off the CDN and leave on JCH Optimize followed by Too Many Files. It seems so strange to me. With everything off my load times were 8s. With JCH on only load times wend UP to 9.43. Then with Too Many Files added load times went DOWN to 6.98s. After I turned back on the CDN the load times went up to 11.6 which really surprised me.
I have not done the Mod_Pagespeed script that Eileen recommended. I am going to put in a note with my host to make sure that will work with them. They have an option for me to pay more and get put on a much more powerful server but they suggested I don't need that yet and need to figure out still why the site is slow.
I am mostly writing this as a tracking tool for myself. But, it could maybe be useful to others and I also hope to maybe get some more good feedback.
Sean

Bummer after about an hour running Too Many Files my site went completely black. One big black screen instead of pages. I had to disable it.

I also tried to use it at DrCarney.com but there it disabled all my megamenus. So, I was not able to use it there.

Anyhow, I am back to the drawing board on optimizing my site at Starch-Smart.com

Sean, have you tried excluding the components that have problems? When I setup my Too Many Files, I had to exclude one or two things.

That is the logical next step. Thanks for suggesting that. I am not sure what components were having the problems but I will go turn it back on and see if I can tell. If you could let me know how you would test for that I will be grateful.

Sean

Something else really strange on my site is that when I look at it using a timeline tool from my host the second item to load is the page. For example

https://www.starch-smart.com/social

Then a bunch of things load. Afterards the second from the last thing to load is the page again! Weird. But, this second time it removes custom.css changes that the first load brought it.

This is apparent on the page at https://www.starch-smart.com/social which loads the Starch-Smart Friend Finder (EasySocial Dating Module) with a bunch of changes that were made to it in the custom.css file. The changes look beautiful as the page first loads. Then on the second load those changes are wiped out.

Anybody ever see anything like this before?

Thanks, Sean

hmm your site is loading fine for me?

Yep, the site loads up fine for me too.

When I am running speed tests my site was running very slow. Thank you both for looking. My host made some changes to my site to help improve things. But, I had to undo some of them. One was that they turned on gzip compression in global configurations but I have to keep that off or else my EasyBlog autoposts to facebook break. :-( That is a facebook problem where they won't parse gzip content.

My site is still taking around 9 seconds (it was slower) to load. I keep wanting to speed that up. Here is the comment from my host:

"I observed that the max request from these are from your CDN and easySocial. You should try disabling both and then see the results ( if they are not necessary of course ) ."

Well, I did turn off the CDN and interestingly enough that is how I got the improvement to 9 seconds. Seems that the CloudFront CDN should speed things up. I am still using the CDN with EasySocial though.

Obviously I am not about to disable EasySocial! That is what my site is all about. :-)

Have you tried this to fix Facebook gzip problem? http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/social-web/social-share/facebook-share/27436

Thanks for sharing this Jannik! Didn't know such plugin exists

You are very welcome

Yes Jannik Laursen. Thank you so much.
Have you tried this yourself? Looks like just what is needed.
Sean

Yes I have tried it (just not with EasyBlog Autoposting, but it should work for it too)... do note that if it does not work at first, you should double check the ordering of plugins. Facebookfix needs to be at the top in either the first or second spot.

Thank you for that tip. Good timing. I am just enabling the plugin now on two sites that I am also turning on gzip for....

This is something that I really hate about Facebook, they define their own standards and everyone has to follow their standards. If they would have done this right, I wouldn't complaint but each time they roll out a new update, all 3rd party developers have to follow their ridiculous standards