alexhenes wrote:Thanks for looking at the Karl... I will wait and see what happens over then next month or so. I am mostly done with configuration. In the winter I may add content on a monthly basis. In the spring and summer... I will be adding content on a weekly basis.
Letting the website "settle" will definitely make sure it speeds up.
alexhenes wrote:I will set the preload to true over the holidays and see what happens. I also wonder if the total number of images on my site make a difference.
It definitely impacts performance. A page before cached, will need to process several items, including all child images, and all folders (for your menu). In your case, I think the main performance-impact comes from your relatively large folder structure. Each full page on your website needs to loop through all other pages to create the mega menu ... However, as a "human" visitor, it is unlikely you will notice this because X3 only needs to load the "content" of the page in json format through ajax. This is MUCH lighter, because the page only processes the content, and does not process the items in the menu like a full page reload does ... Basically, each page has two cache files: 1) full html 2) json (format for ajax content loading)
In fact, the only reason full html pages are created and cached, is because you might be sharing links, and visitors may be accessing your website from a specific gallery link. Because "full pages" are not really created for human visitors (except entry page), often your full cached pages won't get created because they never get demanded.
alexhenes wrote:After building my cache up to 328M using the the crawler... then setting preload to true... things seem to be buzzing along nicely. Will keep an eye on it.
... which leads me to this. I am not saying it is a bad idea to use the crawler, but keep in mind your crawler is not using javascript like a human browser is using. Basically the crawler will be going through your website, caching "full" pages, which are not even used when a human is navigating your page. Considering full "pages" are very heavy (because they also require creating the menu), you are basically triggering a very heavy process, that will certainly slow down your server, which provides no immediate benefits for human visitors.
When a browser navigates between pages, it loads a file like this:
http://www.merelyafleshwound.com/canyoneering.json
... instead of this ...
http://www.merelyafleshwound.com/canyoneering
The json "page" also gets cached, but is a much lighter process, because it just gets the content. I would just be cautious about using crawlers to cache your website, as that is a very "expensive" process for your server, that does not really provide any benefits immediately as they are not used to much degree. At the same time, it might be slowing down the server doing other processes, like creating the json page caches.
... and there is more: If you have preload enabled and the preload object is cached, it won't use neither the json pages or full pages (cached or not). It will only use the data in the preload object, since it includes the entire website compressed. (The preload does not include pages that are hidden from menu, but still available by URL).
Not sure if any of the above makes sense, but I wrote it anyway ...