How to download pages faster

Build your website -> Website Navigation

The basic concept is to download the content and internal links first and then any data that deals with external links. So before the external links are downloaded, the visitors will see my contents and vertical and horizontal menus before they would see the external links.

Because I do not have control over external links and sometimes one or more links seem to take a lot longer, I first download top level messages that you see on each page including the top horizontal menu. Then individual vertical menu and then advertisements if any.

So each page remains the same except the vertical menu when it changes from one topic to another and, of course, the content.

For this to happen, I have divided a page in four distinct parts for downloading in the order given below:

1. The top headline part where I have stated some introduction to the website. This is the first #include in the content file being downloaded. This includes the horizontal menu as well.

2. The left vertical menu. This is the second #include in the content file being downloaded.

3. The content file itself

4. The vertical adverts on the right hand side. This is the third #include in the content file being downloaded.

I had a problem
Initially, I had one big #include file in the content file. The problem was that the page was a lot slower because the adverts - external links - were being downloaded before the vertical menu and horizontal menu. So you would see the ads and other external menus first and then my content and menus.

Generally, you can speed up the page download by doing the following:
For this to implement successfully, you have to learn CSS and be more efficient with the overall structure of the design of your website.

1. Lay out your pages with CSS, not tables
2. Don't use images to display text
3. Call up decorative images through CSS
4. Use contextual selectors
5. Use shorthand CSS properties
6. Minimize white space, line returns and comment tags
7. Put CSS and JavaScript into external documents
8. Use / at the end of directory links