Young Writers Society

For the past week, I've been concentrating a lot on making YWS as fast as can be. I've tested it out on numerous browsers from Internet Explorer 6 to Safari, and it seemed faster to me no matter what (especially on IE 6). If this is your experience as well, I'd love for you to let me know. Similarly, if pages seem to be taking longer to load, let me know.

Part of what I've done is remove unnecessary or duplicative files. One of these to go was the sliding login panel, which has been replaced with a login form at the top of every page. The login panel was always a love-hate thing, so I'm sure some people will welcome the change

Another thing to go was the map on the Who's Online page. I really wanted to keep it, but something like that really bogs down loading times. More than a few users noticed pages were taking longer to load starting a few days ago, and the reason was the map.

Other stuff I've done is compress all images, javascript, and css. As a result, the average size of the page sent to you has dropped from 700kb a week ago to 180kb today. People on dial-up should notice a very significant change.

Now, you might be wondering "Why is speed so important?". If you're not, humor me! A couple reasons. One, the faster a page loads, the more likely the user is going to stick around. And two, more revenue. Google rewards faster loading pages with better paying ads. Better paying ads means more money.

So all in all, YWS should now be faster than ever before.

Yay!

=D

Awesome! I've noticed my computer doesn't temporarily freeze up when I open YWS anymore. Great to see the changes.

The site is much faster. :D My poor, eleven-year-old computer much appreciates this.

Wow Nate. Have you ever thought of launching your own server?

Stori wrote:Wow Nate. Have you ever thought of launching your own server?

YWS is on it's own server.