Do i need a new dedicated server to increase my website speed

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, i have been talking to my hosting company about my site. I am having major problems with the speed of the site. My site is www.in2town.co.uk

Ever since i had to redesign my site after a major mistake was made by the hosting company, my site has been running slow and i have tried everything to sort this out including moving to a dedicated server.

The trouble is nothing is working and now my hosting companny have told me that i need a new dedicated server which will make it faster.

My site is in joomla and the hosting company have told me that the dedicated server below will make the site run faster, but shall i trust them or find another hosting company.

Intel i3 540 3.06 Ghz HT 4MB S-Cache

$219/mo $289/month500GBStorage6GBRAM10TBBandwidthI am using the following to test the speed of my site http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/r0spOGObd/www.in2town.co.uk     and  http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.in2town.co.uk/kVV1mTDcThe trouble i have is, when you try loading the home page it is slow and when you try moving around the site it is slow.Can anyone please give me some advice.

[heroselohim]

I have seen your site and you have an excesive amount of files (scripts and images).

Two easy Joomla optimizations:

• Reduce script (JS) count from 11 to 5 or 4. I recommned to install this joomla plugin for compression and packing: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/performance/site-performance/7350

• You could add a lazy loading plugin for improving image loading. I recommned this extension for Joomla: Lazy Loading Images

As Ryan mentions I would hire an experienced developer, but meanwhile this two plugins will make the difference.

[RyanKent]

Examples of images which appear distorted:

1. The below image size is 188 x 268. You are presenting it on your site as 300x218. There are two issues. First, the distortion. Secondly, you are forcing each user's browser to resize the image on page load which is a page speed issue.

http://www.in2town.co.uk/images/stories/soaps/sunitacorry.jpg.pagespeed.ce.5q59UUOvlk.jpg

2. This image seems to have been resized improperly and appears distorted to me. http://www.in2town.co.uk/images/stories/showbiz/300x218xalex-reid.jpg.pagespeed.ic.iCAezngCuF.jpg

It is my best guess you are obtaining images and resizing everything to 300x218. This work would best be done by a graphic artist.

Please take to heart what Keri shared. Ideally your site should have the following support at the very least: graphic artist/designer, web developer, writer. If you are filling the role of the writer that is fine, but at this time you do not have the skills in the other areas.

You are fighting for traffic in a competitive niche. Others have more staff and budgets. You can still compete but you require some help. The great thing about web development and graphic design is you can learn enough in a day to make your own web page or re-design an image. The challenge is it takes years and dedication to become skilled at these areas, and many people tackle these areas and get themselves into trouble.

I get the feeling you are asking a lot of people a lot of questions, and therefore you are receiving a lot of answers. Your current approach is a recipe for disaster. The "free advice" you are receiving is quite expensive.

[StevenMapes]

There are lots of issues with the site many of which should be a quick fix which you can do yourself.  Here's some starting points

1. You have a lot of Javascript files, look to combine some of them and then minify them (removing the excess  spaces and line breaks), you can find tools online which will do this for you

2. Move some of the javascript files to the bottom of the page, especially the ones which are not needed before the page completes such as the social plug-ins.

3. Compress the images.  You can optmise the image by "saving them for web" (as adobe cal it). You should be able to find a nice balance between file size and quality.  If you have gif's consider using pngs instead

4. minify and combine your CSS files if you can

5. If the web server support compression (which it will do), have that enabled

6. You have some duplicate javascript and CSS files on some pages, these will not help you.

7.  Some of your images, for instance http://www.in2town.co.uk/images/news/davidcameron2.jpg.pagespeed.ce._lClKIKud-.jpg, is being resized within the HTML http://www.in2town.co.uk/latest-uk-news/david-cameron-could-be-putting-the-uk-at-risk-with-defence-cuts which means you are loading an image bigger than you intend to use it, scale it back to the correct size and that'll help

[ClaireH-184886]

thank you ryan and everyone else. can you tell me more about flickr and i will drop you an email. also can you give me some examples of the images that are not great.

i think one of the major problems i have had is, the template it self, it is from gavick.com and i do not think it has been put together properly.

i am not sure if anyone can confirm this but i am using the world news template. if anyone has advice on template clubs that offer a good magazine layout that is put together properly then please do let me know.

can you confirm about what the developer told me, he said the site is taking to long to contact the server. the reason why i am asking this is, if i am going to be throwing money at the site and it is a server issue as well then i need to get a new hosting company.

this morning i had it saying that it was taking 4 seconds for the server to respond. the hosting company is tmd in america.

the developer seems to think that i needed a new hosting company instead of increasing my package.

all this advice has been great, thanks

[KeriMorgret]

One thing nobody has brought up is what your time is worth, and the opportunity cost of trying to do so much yourself.

If you are spending four hours doing something that someone else could do in an hour, that's four hours that you've not been earning income by having appointments with clients, or four hours that you could have spent writing content where you're the expert.

One thought for a cost-effective way to do things yourself would be to go take classes at the UK equivalent to the community college. Take a class in Joomla and learn how to put together a site from a professional, and learn how to set up a development site for testing so people don't see the results of a test gone bad on your live site. Take a class in photoshop and digital image techniques so you can have professional-looking images on your site.

[RyanKent]

With regards to a joomla expert, feel free to shoot me an e-mail or call my office. I have an awesome Joomla group who is also quite inexpensive.

I have to be upfront with you. I have concerns about someone performing the requested work on your site for two reasons. First, when a site has multiple issues and someone works on fixing one particular issue, it may cause other aspects of the site to break due to poor site design. Secondly, you are working on the site at the same time making changes which is a major concern as well. I would suggest with whatever developer you work with, you will need to stop working on the site and trust the developer reports. I know it can be nerve racking when you are dependent on the site's income, but you are in a bad spot and even if everything goes perfect, you will still not be in a great spot but hopefully a bit better off.

All of your images appear to be 300 x 218 which is fine, but the images were not professionally re-sized. Several of them appear distorted which is a problem on any site's home page, but especially a fashion magazine site.

From a pure loading speed perspective, loading that many images from one local server will always be a speed issue. With that said, once the site is optimized and the page is loading better locally, a properly configured CDN will help. Another option would be using an image hosting service such as flickr which will take care of that for you.

[ClaireH-184886]

thought i would share what my hosting company has just sent me

Well indeed the loading speed should be better with your new server. However you should note that we will also have to reinstall all of your caching engines and other speeding programs which will increase the performance of your web-site. However since you will receive more resources for your web-site indeed the loading speed should be increased.

Regarding the reports you are referring to you should note that the loading time of 3.5 seconds for a web-site with that many pictures and elements is a quite good loading speed and for every loading speed you will always get the time for which the pictures need to be loaded. In other words no matter what is the loading time (even if it is 1 second) you will always see the loading time and connecting time to the server as part of the global loading time (for example 1 second)

[ClaireH-184886]

thanks donford. the hotel reviews section was like that because i have been working on the page and now sorted it out. i was just changing the width.

the footer has only just been put on there and was through the advice from a seo guy who said many of the popular magazines do it like that at the moment, so i thought i would give it a try and see how it works. going to give it a week then may take it down. got some more items to put on it.

the site is a work in progress, so adding things all the time but the major issue i have is trying to find out the problem on the speed. for example, going from the home page to the travel section it takes ages to load

what i could do with is a recommendation of a joomla expert to look at the site and see what the problem is and then i can then pay them to solve it.

as mentioned, i did hire someone and all they told me was the problem was the server and said that the site is taking ages for the server to respond, but that does not answer my question of why it takes a while from the home page to go to the travel section.

i will in a year or so get the whole site rebuilt but at the moment i am working on a small budget and need to work on the speed issue.

i tested a site after the developer guy said about the server. i got a site that has nothing on it and then put it through the tools as above, and the sites were coming back around 2 to three seconds and was showing a time delay from the server.

the only other thing the developer said to me was, are you sure you are on a dedicated server, then he checked and said i was although he found two sites on there that should not be on there. when i approached my hosting company they said it was a mistake but not on there part, they said they were not sure how the sites got on there and said it was a technical issue but the site is ok now

[RyanKent]

Diane,

I am doing my best to help but you are in a tough and perhaps impossible situation. Let's use a car analogy. You have car problems. You know the car is not running right but you are unsure what is wrong. The proper step would be to take the car to an expert mechanic for a full diagnosis. Once you have the car looked at by a true expert whom you can trust, you will have all your answers.

You can say "replacing the car is out of the question" but if the car requires major repairs, the cost of repairs might exceed the costs of replacement.

Your request is very dangerous because if you are not careful, you will find someone who will do exactly what you are asking. You may find someone who will ignore everything and just spend a few hours on optimizing the loading speed. You may have serious issues with your site that are being covered up. That is likely the case.

If you do not have the money to have the site properly fixed or rebuilt, then give it up. If you continue to push this position, you run a strong risk of being taken advantage of and losing even more money.

[donford]

I have to get on board with Ryan here. I'm a web developer first and a SEO guy second. Your site doesn't look finished from a development standpoint.

In 3 clicks I found 3 pages with problems.

http://www.in2town.co.uk/Benidorm-News-and-Benidorm-Hotel-Reviews

Huge content column is squished to maybe 30 pixels due to add blocks. Huge turn off.

http://www.in2town.co.uk/Cheap-Flights-Gatwick

No content..?

And root http://www.in2town.co.uk/

Footer is all weird

I point these things out not to criticize you but to hopefully indicate that maybe there is some better way to spend your money initially. I would look to the Joomla forums for help with these issues and the optimization problem. On the surface it looks the site needs to finish its development cycle before you start evaluating dedicated servers. You may find that fixing the existing problems helps with the optimization issue and cost you less in the long run.

Hope this helps,

[ClaireH-184886]

building a new site is out of the question, but how much do you think someone would charge to look at the site and speed it up.

i did get an expert involved the last time i asked this question and they checked the site out only for two hours as that all i had, and they said there was a delay from my hosting company. they said the site was having problems because the site was waiting for my hosting server to respond.

unfortunatly they did not give me much more than that and i was not impressed with the service. i wanted more answers than that. i know two hours was not long but i wanted to see what service i would get for my money before paying any more.

as with mechanics, you can get a good one and another who thinks they are a taxi driver and take you for a ride and i think the last one did just that.

[RyanKent]

You have a huge imbalance Diane. You are paying too much for hosting and not enough for web development. You have a basic Joomla site. If I recall you do not even have a shopping cart or any other major components.

I can't find the right analogy right now but I'll try this one....if your car is not running well you need a mechanic to fix it. Changing to supreme gasoline isn't going to fix it. Even changing to jet fuel wont help. You are throwing money at the problem.

I am worried because you have asked this question before, you have received a solid answer, but you keep asking. Eventually someone will say "sure, go ahead with the bigger server". If that is what you want, go for it.

[ClaireH-184886]

the trouble i have is, the cost of having it rebuilt is not in my budget for at least another two years which is a huge headache. not sure what is vps. at the moment i am with tmd hosting.

the hosting company claim that if i get a bigger dedicated server then my problems will go away. i already pay around 150 dollars each month for the dedicated server that i am using

[RyanKent]

That dedicated server is overkill for your site. What you need is an experienced Joomla developer to review your entire site. As I recall from speaking with you previously, your site was not professionally built. It likely needs to be rebuilt by a professional developer. At the very least, it needs to be thoroughly reviewed.

I have a dedicated server similar to the one you mention and it is fantastic. It can hold dozens of sites like yours. You have a basic, low volume Joomla site.

You have VPS hosting now, correct? If so that is likely enough. You asked before and my advice was to rebuild your site. You can see inhouseseo is offering similar advice now. You can have the best server in the world but if your site is not properly built and optimized, it will load slowly.

You are looking at spending ?$220 - $290/month for hosting. Put that money into web development instead.

[inhouseseo]

The CDN you used may not have been a good one. Akamai is a good CDN but it can be relatively expensive.

If I were you, I would use the page optimizer tool from Google. It is free and very useful. Plus, it is provided by the search engine that ranks your site.

If you are not tech savvy, you can hire and knowledgeable IC from sites such as Odesk, and have them help you with the tasks for a very low cost.

[ClaireH-184886]

i have tried a cdn and it did not work out for me. when i had the cdn which i used through amazon, i was getting a lot of waiting time for the cdn which was making my site slower.

I am not a technical expert and unfortunatly do not have the funds to get an expert on board. the site is in joomla and it seems when i go from one page to another, so for example go from the home page to health section there is a long delay.

i am using gzip to compress the files but not sure how to do any of the others you have listed. i have dealt with the image size issue but cannot reduce the number of images as i need them.

[inhouseseo]

The hosting service or server is a major factor, but it is not the only factor. If I were you, I would first focus on the issues that can and should be addressed on the site itself:

• Compiling code into as few files as possible

• Compressing the files

• Making sure the code is written as efficiently and error-free as possible

• Limiting the number and size of images that need to be loaded

• Tweaking the code so important elements are loaded first

• Making sure CSS is clean and the styling is done via CSS as opposed to done through the coding itself

• Validating the code

• You may want to consider a CDN