Reducing bandwidth (Full Version)

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_gail -> Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 10:32:43)

I want to try to trim some of my bandwidth usage. My site is laden with graphics and I don't use CSS for layout so I have quite a bit of FrontPage code.

Will reworking or eliminating some of the graphics help. I'm assuming, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that graphics loading into web pages take more bandwidth than code.

For example, I have a header graphic on the majority of pages which, if removed, reduces a page load time about 11 seconds. Since it is in an include, it can easily be changed.

thanks, gail



Reflect -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 11:12:44)

You are spot on Gail.

However if it is a host issue for bandwidth charges for exceeding your monthly allotment then I would migrate to a new host with a higher allotment on bandwidth as I KNOW your site will increase in bandwidth needs [;)].

Take care,

Brian



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 11:43:54)

Thanks Brian. I'll start with the graphics. I'm also investigating something called Smarter Selectors. Something ya'll probably know about but not lil 'ole me.

quote:

However if it is a host issue for bandwidth charges for exceeding your monthly allotment then I would migrate to a new host with a higher allotment on bandwidth


No, it is not a host issue at all. I use Katherine and she is more than generous with the allotment of bandwidth!! We just happened to get into this during a recent discussion. The need for a dedicated server may not be until a year or two away. BTW, it was "suggested" I not be bothered about this now so I may get my virtual head chopped off for even asking about it. [:D][8D]

Still, now that the subject has come up, I'd like to try to do a little trimming where possible. I like the challenge (as long as we don't get into talking about me redoing the entire site. lol)

gail



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 11:55:46)

I think there is a way in .htaccess to use compression. You might want to do some research on this. I do not know exactly what it does to the bandwidth, I assume it would lower it.



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 14:33:24)

quote:

For example, I have a header graphic on the majority of pages which, if removed, reduces a page load time about 11 seconds. Since it is in an include, it can easily be changed.

just remember that once the graphic is loaded for one page, it then resides in cache for all and doesnt need to be downloaded again



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 14:36:23)

one thing to consider gail..... optimizing/compressing images means losing detail....its all about compromise. Your site is different than some...digital photograpy is your thing and it seems to me that losing clarity on your images via compression would be much more fatal for you than some others. afterall, if your site is about digital photography and your images are not crisp, that would be a turnoff. justa thought.



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 14:54:09)

quote:

afterall, if your site is about digital photography and your images are not crisp, that would be a turnoff.


You're absolutely right. I was thinking more of redoing some of them by resizing. I've saved all the source files so it won't take that much time. But when all is said and done, the amount of bandwidth saved is probably fairly insignificant.

Increase bandwidth usage, hopefully, will also translate into increased income, then I can afford the extra expense.

Thanks, all, for letting me massage my thinking cap.

gail



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:02:03)

This gives you quite a good indication of file sizes and speed :
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.digicamhelp.com/



Giomanach -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:09:04)

Hey Gail

I agree on the image optimisation bit, but you did mention:

quote:

My site is laden with graphics and I don't use CSS for layout so I have quite a bit of FrontPage code.


I'm talking about the CSS vs FP coding. And before anyone makes me walk the plank...I know I've already been scourned for this before.

On the average FP built site, say 10 pages long, each filling a screen at the resolution of 1280x1024 without images would be around 100Kb in size.

Your web is far from the average, and is hundreds, if not thousands of pages long. In general, dieting the FP HTML and replacing it with CSS based designs etc, would only knock off a few KB, but in your case....I think it would knock off a fair bit. It's just a case of, can you really be bothered to go through every page and add the reference to an external stylesheet, and remove all the FP coding?

I mean, if you want help with it, I'm sure I could find the time tolend a hand here and there, but with the size of your site, even with two, or three people on it, it's still one hell of a task

Just my $0.02

Dan



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:23:11)

Youll see above that the html size is only 25k for the main page.
I think that is completely reasonable?
That page could easily be fine tuned to remove 10%+ off the html, which is probably similar if not more than straight css would do.
To me - the bandwidth use is mostly graphics



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:31:51)

quote:

Your web is far from the average, and is hundreds, if not thousands of pages long. In general, dieting the FP HTML and replacing it with CSS based designs etc, would only knock off a few KB, but in your case....I think it would knock off a fair bit. It's just a case of, can you really be bothered to go through every page and add the reference to an external stylesheet, and remove all the FP coding?

Dan; she already uses an external style sheet; just not for layout. actually, her code is far less than bloated than many. as to the number of pages, I doubt the average viewer is looking at all of the so the number of pages with bloated code would be more of a storage issue than a broadband issue. $.01



Giomanach -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:38:49)

Dan, sometimes it pays to have two stylehseets, one for positioning and another for formatting etc, sometimes I find it easier to have thos two elements of the web separate.

I know Gail already has an external linked to all pages, and that the coding is cleaner than most, but if you can keep the coding to a minimum...you will reep the benefits later on in life

Dan



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:41:14)

quote:

later on in life

sort of like not smoking?



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 15:45:07)

quote:

if you can keep the coding to a minimum...you will reep the benefits later on in life

Why?

All pages that I have viewed on Gails site, are mostly less than 20k
Thats good work considering they are unoptimized.
The bandwidth issue lays with the images - nothing else. Whats css going to do for that?

0.02c



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 16:34:31)

The main header image is 22k, so I think Id concentrate on making that smaller.
Might be tough, as you mention above, to do that and retain the quality look that a photo site should have.
Otherwise it may be a case of rethinking the need for a large graphic in the design if bandwidth is a major concern



d a v e -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 17:15:58)

excellent site btw



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 17:26:04)

quote:

Otherwise it may be a case of rethinking the need for a large graphic in the design if bandwidth is a major concern


But, as Dan pointed out, isn't the page cached and, if so, why would changing it matter in the scheme of things regarding bandwidth?

He wrote:

quote:

just remember that once the graphic is loaded for one page, it then resides in cache for all and doesnt need to be downloaded again


gail



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 17:32:58)

quote:

Your web is far from the average, and is hundreds, if not thousands of pages long. In general, dieting the FP HTML and replacing it with CSS based designs etc, would only knock off a few KB, but in your case....I think it would knock off a fair bit. It's just a case of, can you really be bothered to go through every page and add the reference to an external stylesheet, and remove all the FP coding?


To be honest, I don't want to.

I don't know CSS for positioning and I'm really not interested in learning it at this stage of my life. Though I don't have thousands of pages in the site, I do have hundreds and have plans to add lots more. I just can't fathom redoing it.

I maintain the site because I love digital photography and have always been committed to educating others. I get a lot of satisfaction doing it because I enjoy it.

I admit, the small but steady income I've started getting every month is nice. If a good deal of my livelihood depended on it, I'd take the other route. But it doesn't.

I really appreciate your offer of help, though!

gail



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 17:38:05)

quote:

The main header image is 22k, so I think Id concentrate on making that smaller.
Might be tough, as you mention above, to do that and retain the quality look that a photo site should have.


I can make it smaller by making the graphic narrower rather than optimizing it so it looks like mush. Alternatively, I can rethink the entire header graphic and make changes accordingly...though I must admit that photography is about and by people...that's the message I want the graphic to "send."

gail



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 18:22:48)

With the main graphic, more visitors will generate more bandwidth.
So while the current user may have it cached, new users, one off visitors etc wont.

So - its up to you. With static view numbers, the bandwidth will stay pretty much the same.
If you start generating visitors, then you still need to optimize the things that will give you best bang for the buck.
For me, thats the images and perhaps the existing css file.
Other things you can do, are to present lo-res / hi-res images as a user selectable option



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 20:55:34)

quote:

With the main graphic, more visitors will generate more bandwidth.


Changed the header graphic. http://www.digicamhelp.com/ Hope it looks okay.

I will no doubt play more with the header area. However, for now, by making the changes I've trimmed about 5-7 seconds off of more than 80% of the pages in my site...the pages which I suspect are visited most frequently (eg. main linked and sub-linked pages)

Five - seven seconds doesn't sound like a lot! It is? Will it make much of a difference?

quote:

perhaps the existing css file.


Can you please explain briefly what you mean here, Spooky? Take away all code from the css file that I'm not actually applying to anything? I do have some of that.

Thanks so much everyone for all the help!! [:)]

gail



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 20:58:48)

quote:

With the main graphic, more visitors will generate more bandwidth.
So while the current user may have it cached, new users, one off visitors etc wont

good point...



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 21:04:59)

Certainly remove any unused code.
eg - simply removing white space and comments, youll lose about 1k

Theres a lot of defining links in there too, so Id try and minimise the number required and utilize the cascade where possible



Spooky -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 21:07:59)

btw Gail, the new image looks fine to my untrained eye [:D]
If anything - it looks more suited to the topic than the previous



dpf -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/16/2004 21:09:01)

quote:

new image looks fine

i thought (!) the image had changed but wasn't sure.



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/17/2004 8:33:10)

quote:

Five - seven seconds doesn't sound like a lot! It is? Will it make much of a difference?


Can someone help me understand this a little better. If I get 10,000 hits on, say, the home page, that's 50,000 - 70,000 seconds. Will it reduce broadband useage in any significant way?

thanks, gail



prabodhanpotdar -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/17/2004 10:01:32)

Great site gail ..

I am planning for the Sony P100 5.1 MP ..BTW Ia m a amateur astronomer from India

I will require your help in Using it for astronomy

Keep up the great work

Prabodhan

http://prabs4u.tripod.com



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/17/2004 10:15:28)

Thanks for you kind words, Prabodhan!

quote:

I will require your help in Using it for astronomy


Wowa!

I am more than happy to help where I can, but using a digital camera for astronomy is way out of my league. However, one of the absolute best places something like this is at the forums at dpreview. www.dpreview.com Fabulous, active place; unequalled online help for the sort of info you will need. Check it out, too, before you by special lenses.

gail



abbeyvet -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/17/2004 12:06:52)

Comparing seconds in relation to bandwidth does not mean much - it is really dependant on the users connection and it may take one person 1 second to download 25KB and another 20 seconds, but both will use exactly the same amount of bandwidth.

Bandwidth as it relates to hosting is measured in megabyte per period of time - or to me exact more usually Gigabytes per Month.

To see the effect on a site of reducing page size is really quite difficult, as it so much depends on how often the pages are changed (and therefore how much of the site is cached) and on what proportion of the visitors are new visitors.

Say you reduce a page (code, images, everything) by, to take a round number, 10KB.

If that page now gets 1000 new visitors in a month then it will result in a bandwidth saving of 1000 x 10KB = 10,000KB or about 10MB.

Obviously if you have small numbers of visitors and a reasonable bandwidth 10MB is neither here nor there and matters little. But if you were having 10,000 new visitors it would be 100MB saved, and if you had 100,000 it would be a gigabyte and so on. So it can become very significant as numbers grow.

The other thing to bear in mind is that anything shaved off an image is worth it. Say you put up a new image that is 30KB in size. It will obviously have to be downloaded even by returning visitors, being new.

So, suppose it is on a page which gets 1000 unique visitors in a month - just that image would use about 30MB that month. If you made it just a bit smaller and carefuly optimised it you could possible reduce it to 20KB, without anyone really noticing, but with a saving that month of 10MB.

Multiply that accross a site and increase the traffic and it starts to make huge differences.



_gail -> RE: Reducing bandwidth (9/17/2004 12:51:26)

quote:

ORIGINAL: abbeyvet
Multiply that accross a site and increase the traffic and it starts to make huge differences.


Very helpful reply!! Thanks.

As you know, Katherine, I'm beginning to get quite a nice number of unique visitors each month at my site, not to mention total page hits. I'm going to tweak the header graphic more, but even the 5-7 seconds I've trimmed may indeed begin to make a difference. It will be interesting to watch the stats.

And now, luck of the Irish, you'll just have to put up with me a little longer as a hosted client. [:D][8D]

gail



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