community.centminmod.com journey for speed

re-ran facebook first and repeat view as it seems the first run had fully loaded delays due to ngx_pagespeed defer js calculations and optimisations not being activated yet (ngx_pagespeed still working out optimal js loading).

now that ngx_pagespeed has optimised js and defer js filter, we can see the following breakdown

first and repeat view compared for each from top to bottom, listed order as

• facebook first view run 2
• facebook repeat view run 2
• facebook first view run 1
• facebook repeat view run 1
• non-facebook first view
• non-facebook repeat view

GTmetrix numbers

Both are ngx_pagespeed optimised pages

left side = non-facebook login
right side = facebook login

---

Interestingly, filmstrip shows that facebook visual loading rendered slightly more to screen 0.25 seconds ahead of non-facebook login enabled page

 

Latest gtmetrix results as at Jan 25, 2015

 

Webpagetest.org latest LA 5Mbps Cable 9 run test

speedindex = 639ms

 

Some real time visitor gathered Page Speed load times from Google Analytics for forums. Geographic location matters when looking at Page Speed numbers. As you can see Indonesia and Philippines having a bad month for connectivity to my Linode Freemont located server for this forums and pulling up my averages heh

Most important is Avg Document Interactive Time, that is as close to Webpagetest.org's Speedindex metric and initial visual render time.

 

Removed Bing Translator from sidebar and updated 10+ XF addons

 

latest gtmetrix score

 

Forums just switched to using Redis cache with Xenforo so retesting webpagetest.org

• Centmin Mod 123.08stable
• Nginx 1.9.5 HTTP/2
• MariaDB 5.5.45 still soon updating to MariaDB 10.0.21
• PHP 5.6.13 + Zend Opcache
• CentOS 6.7
• Enhanced Search Xenforo Addon + Elasticsearch

 

Latest GTMetrix

 

Re-re-enabled KeyCDN account for the forums now that KeyCDN has HTTP/2 suppot

Since GTmetrix Chrome 36 doesn't support HTTP/2, using webpagetest.org Dulles vs San Francisco Cable 5Mbp tests to compare. Looking good

Forums hosted on 4GB Linode VPS Freemont, California so San Francisco test is naturally faster

 

Faster than google.com

 

Forums hosted on newly upgraded 8GB Linode VPS Freemont, California thanks to Linode's free double memory upgrade.

Also new forum style in place - Forum New Style - Flat Pixel+ Default | Centmin Mod Community So re-testing pagespeed numbers

webpagetest.org Dulles Cable vs Dulles 3G Fast with Chrome browser. Only concerned with Speedindex numbers as that relates to how fast the page visually renders for users. Compress image and cache static files are all 3rd party resource related due to serving Adsense banner ads etc. Note previous results in this thread didn't have Adsense footer banner ad on forum index page like I do have now.

• Centmin Mod 123.09beta01 LEMP stack
• Nginx 1.11.3 with HTTP/2 + ngx_pagespeed enabled
• MariaDB 5.5.x latest
• PHP 5.6.24 + Zend Opcache
• CentOS 6.8
• Enhanced Search Xenforo Addon + Elasticsearch
• Xenforo Redis Cache Addon
• Linode 8GB KVM VPS Fremont, CA

 

Started long term tracking of forum's webpagetest.org dulles cable 5mbps performance over 5 run averages and charting it out

Forums are in Fremont, California behind Sucuri Cloudproxy for DDOS mitigation so part of performance is for Sucuri's nginx proxy.

 

Did you know you can do WebPagetest.org page speed testing with webpagetest.org scripting to test your web application's shared cache paths via navigating a few urls without logging data and only log data for the final destination to see effects of caching at browser etc levels ?

example scripting to be added to script tab

Code:

logData 0
setViewportSize 1920 1080
navigate https://community.centminmod.com/
navigate https://community.centminmod.com/forums/forum-news.2/

logData 1
navigate https://community.centminmod.com/
setViewportSize 1920 1080

end result is WebPagetest Test Details - Dulles : nav ind...ty.centminmod.com/ - 01/01/17 05:02:34

 

Latest webpagetest.org cable 5mbps 3x run tests in San Jose and Dulles while forums are located in Fremont, CA

SpeedIndex is the important metric













seems San Jose version loaded more Google Adsense related assets though

 

Switched off Sucuri WAF and moved to Cloudflare Pro plan and disabled Centmin Mod ngx_pagespeed too as not needed with Cloudflare Pro's feature set i.e. Polish and WebP support

WebpageTest.org Dulles Cable page load tests to backend origin Centmin Mod Nginx located in Fremont, California with 4 tests done each with 3x WPT run average. The filmstrip compare shows in order from top to bottom the following:

• Cloudflare Pro with Centmin Mod Nginx ngx_pagespeed disabled
• Cloudflare Free plan with Sucuri WAF in between connecting to Centmin Mod Nginx
• Cloudflare Free plan with Cloudflare in DNS only mode connecting to Sucuri WAF in front of Centmin Mod Nginx
• Sucuri WAF in front of Centmin Mod Nginx

As you can slowest was having Cloudflare > Sucuri WAF > Centmin Mod Nginx and fastest is as expected with Cloudflare Pro in front of Centmin Mod Nginx.





Changing WPT location to California EC2 so same as origin server in Fremont, California shows similar result in that Cloudflare Pro by itself was fastest out of the 4 tested configurations.




Finer details

 

Been a while since I updated this thread and retested mobile 3G 1.6Mbps webpagetest.org profile for

• Galaxy S7 Chrome
• Motorola G4 Chrome
• Apple iPhone 8 iOS 11
• OnePlus 5 Chrome
• iPad 2017 iOS 11

Tested 3x runs each with first and repeat view all are from Dulles, VA US East Coast. FYI forums are hosted in Fremont, CA Linode VPS on US West Coast so on other side of USA.

Galaxy S7 Chrome 3G mobile 1.6Mbps



Motorola G4 Chrome 3G mobile 1.6Mbps



iPhone 8 3G mobile 1.6Mbps



OnePlus 5 Chrome mobile 1.6Mbps



iPad 2017 iOS 11 mobile 1.6Mbps

 

Forum page speed updates

It's been a little over 2 weeks since I switched the forums over to Progressive Web App (PWA) ~July 28th, 2018 to improve page load speed and the results haven't been as dramatic as when I switched centminmod.com site over to PWA. Overall, there has been some improvements which have been overshadowed by spikes in page load times in Indonesia and India regions (and single spikes in UK and China). The most dramatic improvement if you see below charts is from Russia based visitors though

Below are the top country visitor page load speed times for the forums from July 2, 2018 to August 13, 2018 with circle marker indicating July 28, 2018 switch over date.

First 3 charts are for overall Desktop, Mobile, Desktop + Modible pagespeed



Though Google PageSpeed Insight origin stats show improvements WebPerf - PageSpeed - PageSpeed Testing Via APIs: Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix & WebpageTest.org.

FYI, Google PageSpeed Insight origin reports are updated daily for past month's metrics. So over time if you're working on page load speed optimisations for First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Document Content Loaded (DCL) times, they will reflect in your PSI origin reported pagespeed metric time

 

Being a pagespeed obsessed addict, I decided to optimise my forum style's Fontawesome usage by reducing the size of the forum style's default Fontawesome css and web font sizes so that I only load the web fonts that my particular forum style uses. This is opposed to loading a heap of web fonts that come in default Fontawesome bundle which are never used by the forum style.

End result is reducing web font sizes dramatically

i.e.

• woff2 font dropped from 76KB to 19.5KB and the bundled uncompressed css dropped from 31KB to 12KB.
• woff font dropped from 96KB to 42KB
• ttf font dropped from 162KB to 42KB
• eot font dropped from 162KB to 42KB
• otf front increased from 132KB to 157KB ??
• svg font dropped from 434KB to 153KB

default


optimised



webpagetest.org test shows optimised fontawesome.css is 2.2KB compressed !



Not sure if I managed replicate all forum style's Fontawesome referenced calls, so there maybe missing icons somewhere.

 

Been a while since updated this thread. Using webpagetest to test my forum's repeat visitor browser and cloudflare caching effectiveness with a multi-step webpagetest test navigating the following forum urls where some are revisited to see 1st and 2nd visit page speed metrics. This will evaluate how effective a configuration I have for browser level cache and cloudflare cache

Navigation path as follows

Code (Text):

https://community.centminmod.com/
https://community.centminmod.com/link-forums/ways-you-can-support-centmin-mod.62/
https://community.centminmod.com/
https://community.centminmod.com/forums/introductions.5/
https://community.centminmod.com/threads/attention-future-centmin-mod-experts.8021/
https://community.centminmod.com/
https://community.centminmod.com/forums/virtual-private-server-vps-hosting.26/
https://community.centminmod.com/forums/virtual-private-server-vps-hosting.26/page-2
https://community.centminmod.com/threads/13-way-vps-server-benchmark-comparison-tests-upcloud-vs-digitalocean-vs-linode-vs-vultr-vs-hetzner.17742/
https://community.centminmod.com/
https://community.centminmod.com/forums/system-administration.39/
https://community.centminmod.com/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/amd-ryzen-3900x-12c-24t-centminmodbench-sh-run.52/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/albums/cpu-frequency-charts.14/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/albums
https://community.centminmod.com/media/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/amd-ryzen-3900x-12c-24t-centminmodbench-sh-run.52/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/albums/cpu-frequency-charts.14/
https://community.centminmod.com/media/albums

webpagetest dulles US East Coast 5mbps cable chrome browser


webpagetest california US West Coast 5mbps cable chrome browser