Does your site seem to load too slowly? In this book Steve Souders explains practical ways to speed it up. In the first couple of chapters he provides an overview of webpage loading analytics and how the HTTP protocol works. Then he offers 14 "rules" that, if followed, will help speed up webpage loading times. They include:
Make fewer HTTP requests
Use a content delivery network
Add an Expires header
Gzip components
Put stylesheets at the top
Put scripts at the bottom
Avoid CSS expressions
Make JavaScript and CSS external
Reduce DNS lookups
Minify JavaScript
Avoid redirects
Remove duplicate scripts
Configure ETags
Make Ajax cacheable
The book concludes with a deconstruction of 10 top high performance sites to see how they handle these issues: Amazon, AOL, CNN, eBay, Google, etc. This book is intended for serious webmasters charged with optimizing a website, not the average small business owner. Recommended.
High Performance Web Sites
