Optimize Page Load Time

[bianca_writer]

Hi Everyone,

I use Google Analytics to view metrics for the HTML output my team creates via MadCap Flare. The analytics showed that the average page load time is pretty high, so I used the PageSpeed Tools (part of Google Analytics) to identify problem areas and possible solutions. The tool recommends minifying and/or compressing parts of the backend including:

Enable compression for
Resources/Scripts/MadCapAll.js
Resources/Scripts/jquery.min.js
Resources/Scripts/foundation.6.2.3_custom.js
Skins/Fluid/Stylesheets/foundation.6.2.3.css
Resources/Stylesheets/font-awesome-4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css
Resources/Stylesheets/MainStyles.css

Has anyone else used PageSpeed Tools to optimize page load time? Any pointers on what will make the most difference for page load time? Is it worth compressing any of the JavaScript?

Thanks!

[NorthEast]

Half of those are already minified, and these are some of the larger files too - MadCapAll.js, jquery.min.js, font-awesome.min.css

If you include third party files in your content folder, then include the minified versions - like you have for Font Awesome.

However, for the remaining files, the problems you'll have are that:

(a) The files are added to the output at build time (they're not in the project content folder), so you need to add your own post build process to copy the minified versions into the output folder (to overwrite the existing files).

(b) Some of those files are not static and are generated at build time - like the CSS files it generates from your own stylesheets. For these files, your post build process would also have to minify these files, prior to copying them.


I'd perhaps do some manual tests to see if minifying makes any difference, before you attempt to do any of the above.

[bianca_writer]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the response! I didn't even realize that some of those files were already minified; that explains the ".min." in the file names. This is all new to me, so your info and recommendations is really helpful. Is there a specific tool you recommend to minify files, or are they all basically the same?

[NorthEast]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the response! I didn't even realize that some of those files were already minified; that explains the ".min." in the file names. This is all new to me, so your info and recommendations is really helpful. Is there a specific tool you recommend to minify files, or are they all basically the same?

Sorry I don't - I didn't think the effort setting it up was worthwhile.