Allpar and site loading times

We’ve been watching the amount of time it takes people to load Allpar rise and rise and rise, and we’ve been wondering why. We keep making things faster and things keep getting slower.

Well, I just figured it out.

It’s the browsers. Mainly, it’s Android!

Here’s the average site loading time per platform:

1) Windows: 6.84 seconds
2) Mac: 5.47 seconds
3) Android: 22.71 seconds (that’s not a typo)
4) Linux: 5.48 seconds

iPod, iPhone, etc don’t seem to trip Google’s meters, so I don’t know what influence they have.

What’s interesting about this is that the delays seem to be entirely caused by the 10%-20% of visitors who use smartphones. In short, I’ve responded to the demands for bigger and better photography, better use of big monitors, etc., only to be blindsided by mobile phones.

My response so far has been to move to a new, lighter, faster menu system, which made a significant dent in the problem, to add systems to the home page “mobile view” version, to research site conversion services, and to put in a new mobile feature for Allpar News, which is a bigger than usual mobile center.

For the future, at some point I will be setting up a site at allpar.mobi with minified pages automatically converted for mobile use. My guess, though, is that I don’t really have to do EVERY page, 80% of mobile hits are probably to the news, forums, and a dozen or two permanent pages. Still, mobile conversion is pretty intense, if done manually!

PS> Wondering about that low Mac number? I’m guessing it’s a combination of a few Windows smartphones and the fact that there are no true low-end Macs… and no Mac netbooks.

Allpar and the hurricane

As some of you may know, Allpar is headquartered in the unlikely state of New Jersey (not far from where the Three Musketeers developed the first Chrysler car for Willys).

Allpar’s server is in Michigan, however, and is unlikely to be affected by any power or network outages in the East. Bill Cawthon will continue to update the news from Texas, and any security issues that may come up will be dealt with by experts in Michigan.

Depending on whether power and Internet services are lost, and how long they take to recover, we may not be able to post our update on Monday. We may do an early weekly update to avoid this.

However, if you send email to Dave at allpar, and he doesn’t reply for a week, there could be a good reason — power outages are now predicted to be “several weeks in some areas” (despite having the most reliable utility in the nation), and telephone and Internet outages are likely to take longer to repair.

As a quick aside, I’ve listened to speeches from the governor of Connecticut and mayor of New York (a Democrat and a Republican) and have been impressed by their rationality, their apparent depth of preparation, and their detailed plans. Their speeches, and that of my own town manager, were more useful than the shrill shouting of the broadcast news people.

Well, I’m going down to the basement now to move everything above the projected water line, get the pumps ready (one AC, one DC), and top off the charge on the standby pump battery. Good luck to anyone affected by the storms, and see you soon, I hope!