OctaGate SiteTimer

I've been busy using a huge array of free web tools over the last few weeks and the OctaGate SiteTimer has proved to be very handy.

Whilst optimising the HTML and PHP code in a number webpages I used the SiteTimer, checking to see if there were any noticeable speed gains, and the OctaGate SiteTimer not only showed the speed of the page but of the individual files that the page pulled in.

By that it showed me the speed and loading times of:

• The page as a whole
• Favicons
• Cascading Style Sheets
  
• External JavaScripts
• Image files

What the SiteTimer highlighted was that one of the pages I was pulling in had 3 favicons being called when there was only a need for the 1. So I dived into the CMS I was using, hacked the templates and saved 2x file calls and a good couple of seconds of server time.

In addition SiteTimer highlighted that there were a couple of redundant images I was calling in to my pages and not using... now time to hunt down the code for those images and kill them off too...

Labels: design, development, tools