phpSpeedy claims seem exaggerated
A web buddy of mine sent me a link to phpSpeedy via StumbleUpon, and asked me what I thought of it. It seems like a good idea for a topic, and a waste if I just replied in email, so I figured I’d write my thoughts here.
What phpSpeedy claims is that it speeds up website load time by 500%. That’s a fairly bold claim, and I’m not totally sure that it’s accurate. Yes, there are some graphs on the site that show the differences between a test file using the script and one without. But some of the gains just don’t make sense. More on that later.
The script performs 4 actions. It gzips your page, reduces HTTP requests, ads an expire header for long in the future, and minifies your JavaScript and CSS; all techniques that Yahoo recommends as “best practices“. The most interesting of these is that it appears to merge your CSS and JavaScript into fewer files so that your visitor doesn’t have to make as many requests to your server.
What I see as the biggest problem is that this script trades processor time for transfer time and winds up repeating the same tasks over and over. It’s not all that difficult to reduce the size of CSS and JavaScript, either by minifying on your own computer and using that version online or manually removing comments and white space. By doing it manually it only has to happen once instead of on every page view.
The other problem I have isn’t the script specifically, but the stats that are used for the claim of a 500% speedup. If you go to the phpSpeedy page you’ll see two output displays from YSlow. The claim is that the YSlow grade went from a 45% to a 97%. One major issue with the screenshot. It appears that the Content Delivery Network grade improves by using this script, but neither of those make sense. The author mentions down in the comments that the server where the test was run was using a CDN for the test server, which seemingly invalidates the entire test.
I am also concerned that the script doesn’t seem to be in use on the server that’s hosting it. His YSlow score is a 42% which is even worse than the test case. I’m a little confused as to why this script isn’t in use on the author’s own site if it helps so much.
All of that said, I think this script is a great idea and I have no doubt that it will speed up page load time some. If you do not have the time or knowledge to put in these speed techniques into your site then phpSpeedy would be a great way to speed up your site. But I think working the techniques into your site manually would be even better.
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