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

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 9, 2023
9 replies
1711 views

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

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Correct answer osgood_

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.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

ChatGPT bot.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

BenPleysier

Community Expert

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

Wappler is the DMXzone-made Dreamweaver replacement and includes the best of their powerful extensions, as well as much more!

O

osgood_

Legend

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

ajacobs.

Participant

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

Community Expert

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.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

ajacobs.

Participant

Thanks for the tips!

BenPleysier

Community Expert

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

Wappler is the DMXzone-made Dreamweaver replacement and includes the best of their powerful extensions, as well as much more!

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

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

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

B

Ben M

Community Expert

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

Community Expert

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:

Hope that helps.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Jon Fritz

Community Expert

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.

O

osgood_

Legend

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.

O

osgood_Correct answer

Legend

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 RayAuthor

Participant

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

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