[BlueOnyx:20470] Re: Initial Response Time seems slow

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

On 1/6/2017 1:13 AM, Don Teague wrote:
> I took a look, and DNS for the server is already set for that, and 8.8.4.4.

Those are not the nameservers I would recommend for use in our 
facilities as we provide recursives that will typically answer a bit 
quicker.   But that said, I'm not sure what you're seeing is DNS 
related, unless your webserver is configured to do lookups (which I also 
don't recommend).

But past that, I'm curious if you're wondering about the actual transfer 
time for the files from your server, or is it a page load issue?

Actually, I just ran your site on GTmetrix.  Keeping in mind it's a very 
broad tool and not always 100% spot-on with its recommendations it can 
get you pretty close.  Look at the waterfall, and you'll find that your 
actual server is responding very speedily.  The content that you are 
offloading to "cdn*" hostnames is what really drags.   Beware those CDN 
offerings... I've found they are not always the best route, though 
conceptually they sound great.   Sometimes it's what you need, but you 
don't always need the same tool for every job.

That said, and although we're drifting a bit OT for this list, you may 
want to evaluate the use of CDN in this case. In addition, you should 
probably make some tweaks to the way the pages are served.  Make sure 
you've got gzip compression on (hint: .htaccess can be your friend). 
Make sure you are allowing browsers to cache.

The big player, if you're wondering about why does it take a while for 
the page to first render, then everything pops in pretty quickly, is 
going to be the use of javascript.  You've got quite a bit of it 
(completely normal) that is front-loaded with page.  The browser has to 
retrieve and process that before it starts to render a page.  The more 
javascript you're using, the more processing that must be done. 
Sometimes you can make tweaks that will allow you to change that 
behavior so that the page will load and render the javascript inline. 
But if you're using a CMS then your hands may be a bit tied on that front.

Not sure if any of this is addressing your exact question.  Hope it helps.
-- 
Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
Access, Web Hosting, Colocation, Dedicated
www.virtbiz.com | toll-free (866) 4 VIRTBIZ