The nominations for TTAC’s Ten Worst Awards 2008 are now closed. I’ll keep the comments section underneath our two prior posts on this most TTAC of new car awards open, but that’s it: our list is complete. Frank Williams will, in due course, give you some insight into the vehicles selected and the comments used to justify the nominations. Meanwhile, I apologize for our site problems. I know that TTAC’s been as slow as Ford’s panther platform updates, and buggier than a Michigan windscreen on a hot August night. The speed issue is ongoing; we’re still trying to learn how to cope with traffic spikes [pictured]. The second seems ad-related. Any hints or geeky kvetches you can provide below will help our crack team of programmers and dev types, and probably, hopefully, make you feel better. Rest assured, I understand the need to provide our Best and Brightest with the best possible technical interface, and will stay on top of these issues until they’re resolved or the Moller Skycar takes wing. If you’d like to drop me an email about this or any other issue, please use robert.farago@thetruthaboutcars.com. I will reply personally, ASAP. Thanks for your patience, understanding and patronage.
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Your speed problems will get worse. Give me 10 minutes.
I’ve almost given up checking up on TTAC while at home, the “ads.doubleclick” process seems to hijack all computing power.
At work however, the security software blocks the ads and the content runs with nary a glitch.
It might be those Vibrant Media links you guys have on here. You know some of those play video now?
God bless you, MRTG. I love the little ways in which you tell me, oh so quickly, how much of a crapbucket my day is about to be.
psarhjinian>
MRTG is awesome. Cacti works quite well also.
In other news, I can’t wait to see if the Prius made the list :)
A few thoughts for speeding up the site:
1) Make sure your scripts are cached (I see eTags in some of the images, but not scripts – as a matter of fact, I’m seeing “NoCache” for some scripts). Ensure all images are cached – that Durango image is 130k and costs me .7 seconds each time I load it – once is acceptable, subsequent trips are killers for performance.
2) Compress your content where applicable – GZIP or Deflate your html & script before sending it off. I’d ignore images for now, since you’ll probably gain next to nothing as their already compressed (at JPEG/GIFs). JS files should show roughly 80% compression – I’m showing your JS files being in the top 4% in terms of size (based on roughly 700 round trips, or roughly 2 page views with a few ads updating in the background).
3) Use image maps instead of individual images where applicable – I noticed your car logos are all seperate – I’m counting roughly 40 images at .1 seconds each to my location – that’s 4 seconds total (if they streamed sequentially), never mind the overhead of requesting each one individually. One image map will save you an easy 75%.
Have fun!
Brendon
The site seems better today, but in the past few weeks it has been consistently one of the worst that I regularly visit. Seems bogged down with too much crap.