What are the best practices for optimizing website performance and load speed in Dreamweaver?

[Rachael Ray]

What are the best practices for optimizing website performance and load speed in Dreamweaver, and do you have any tips or tools to streamline the process

[osgood_ · Accepted solution]

I'm informed that if you minify any javascript or css file used in your website then it improves the users download performance. Personally l view this as a load of rubbish. Unless your application is hugely complex then it won't make a lot of difference.

The problem with application development these days is it's full of bull...shite. You have developers using a bloated workflow to produce a basic website. This is as a result of influence by large players where these workflows are most likely needed, however these somewhat ugly and mostly unnecessary workflows are being taught as main stream solutions.

My personal view is just keep your code clean and only use what code is required. Unfortunately if you gravitate to third party frameworks and libraries to create your application they usually bring a lot of redundancy with them.

[Rachael Ray]

Thank you for help. I optimized my website speed [WordPress spam link removed by moderator] which is 92 now according to GooglePage Load Insight 

[Jon Fritz]

The biggest chunk is going to be done in your image editing program.

Reduce the size of your images to what you actually intend to present online, versus leaving them at their original size and rescaling via HTML or CSS.

That will have, by far, the largest effect on load times.

[osgood_]

The biggest chunk is going to be done in your image editing program.

Reduce the size of your images to what you actually intend to present online, versus leaving them at their original size and rescaling via HTML or CSS.

That will have, by far, the largest effect on load times.

By Jon Fritz

Good point, l agree. I completely overlooked the obvious place to start making savings, the rest is largely going to be insignificant given youre not using a bloated workflow which relies on a lot of third party frameworks, libraries and plugins.

[Nancy OShea]

There are not site performance enhancing tools in Dreamweaver, if that's what you're asking.  No code editor can do that.

Performance starts at the server level.  It's also baked in to your site during the creation process based on what if any optimization methods were used. For example, does your site use dedicated or virtual private hosting, compressed files, minified scripts, assets hosted on Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), small file size, low number of HTTP server requests, etc...?

To measure your site's speed & performance, start with these tools and follow their advice to the extent that you can:

• https://www.whynopadlock.com/
• https://gtmetrix.com/
• https://developers.google.com/speed
• https://pagespeed.web.dev/

Hope that helps.

[Ben M]

I don't know if DW will help with most of this, as it has been already mentioned, images will impact your speed, but also all of the scripts you may include on a website (ie: analytics, marketing automation, chat, tracking, UX research, etc.). And sometimes you can only remove so much without removing tools or apps that help you. If you could share your website, we can offer some suggestions or what you may be albe to impact and what you may have to live with.

[Nancy OShea]

If you use WordPress to create your site, you will find hosting plans that specialize in WordPress are optimized to give WP sites better performance.  One such host is Bluehost.  But there are others...

https://www.bluehost.com/cs/special/wordpress-campaigns

[BenPleysier]

I find that Lighthouse is one of the best tools when developing a website.Its is available in developers panel of your browser.

[ajacobs.]

Speaking of smaller image sizes, has anyone experimented with the WebP format? I usually go with SVG for icons and logos since they load quickly, but I'm considering giving WebP a try to replace JPEGs.

Also, hello 👋 I'm new here and my name is AJ. 

[Nancy OShea]

Welcome to the Dreamweaver Community, @ajacobs. 

I love WebP.  It's my preferred file type for rasters under 16,383 x 16,383 pixels that contain alpha-transparency and/or frame animations.  However, Adobe's limited support for the format is still an obstacle.  I can't use it from Photoshop's (Legacy) SaveForWeb or ExportAs panels.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/support-webp-image-format.html

As yet, Adobe's online services (Portfolio, Express, Stock) don't support WebP and neither do these forums.  😶

That said, be careful when using lossy WebP compression to reduce file size. It permanently removes file data and can severely degrade image quality.  Always keep original RAW, TIFF or PSD files as backups.

[ajacobs.]

Thanks for the tips! 

[osgood_]

Speaking of smaller image sizes, has anyone experimented with the WebP format? I usually go with SVG for icons and logos since they load quickly, but I'm considering giving WebP a try to replace JPEGs.

Also, hello 👋 I'm new here and my name is AJ. 

By ajacobs.

I'd say go for it as WebP is 96.68% supported so that should be good enough. I havent used it myself as yet, I still use the jpg format but that's just because of old habits.

[BenPleysier]

Speaking of smaller image sizes, has anyone experimented with the WebP format? I usually go with SVG for icons and logos since they load quickly, but I'm considering giving WebP a try to replace JPEGs.

Also, hello 👋 I'm new here and my name is AJ. 

By ajacobs.

I have my own liitle WebP converter that I use to upload and convert images as needed,

[BenPleysier]

Although I totally agree with what you have written, I feel that https://webdavo.com  needs the same attention.

[osgood_]

Does anyone really care?

I haven't come across too many websites that don't load fast enough for me assuming the web developer has at least been somewhat practical and sensible. Even websites full of shiite with numerous calls to css and javascript files, inline styling such as used by WP and others load without any noticeable dragging and the UK isn't necessary noted for super fast broadband speeds yet.

Probably too much time and effort wasted for little return in my opinion, just use common sense and you should be good, without worrying to much about getting a few merit marks, which really make very little difference

Having said that l don't know about the flying bird on each page load that's a bit annoying, perhaps that's masking many a sin.........humm

[Nancy OShea]

[Chat GPT / Spam removed by moderator.]

[Nancy OShea]

ChatGPT bot.