My IP.Board page loads in 9 seconds...

[BtownBanners]

I need a whole boat load of help and it doesn't seem like my host or IP.board is prepared to help me in any way. My site BtownBanners.com constantly is crashing my server (VPS w/ Bluehost) and nobody seems to figure out why. IP says it's Bluehost, Bluehost says it's IP. Can anyone give me some assistance in getting this all solved? I'm not very tech friendly, but I'll do my best to provide whatever is needed to get this thing figured out. My site can't afford to keep crashing like this...

[Grumpy]

Yikes.

I see a whole load of problems.

1. Your server seems uber slow. The server itself. Hard to say what's the problem. But I'm gonna guess the server itself sucks / overloaded.
2. Your background image is way too big. '> It's 757KB. I'd say avoid any images bigger than 100KB. Additionally, the network itself seems to be of poor quality and/or overloaded.
3. It took 2~4 seconds for me jut to get a 404 on this file: http://btownbanners.com/public/js/lazyload.min.js That's a sign of server overload or the worst web server setup you can imagine.
4. Your reverse DNS points to plusminussports.com ... uh... what?
5. bluehost.com - You're hosted on a crappy host. Avoid all EIG brands like the plague and jump out of any brands EIG acquires. Doesn't matter if they were good, they will start sucking.

... Actually, I was listing them as I see it. But I find it meaningless to do any further diagnostic. Swap hosts. Yours sucks.

IPB doesn't really like us discussing about alternative hosts. So, I'll just refer you to webhostingtalk.com for a good place to search. Or you can get IPB hosting.

[BtownBanners]

Yikes.

I see a whole load of problems.

1. Your server seems uber slow. The server itself. Hard to say what's the problem. But I'm gonna guess the server itself sucks / overloaded.
2. Your background image is way too big. '> It's 757KB. I'd say avoid any images bigger than 100KB.
3. It took 2~4 seconds for me jut to get a 404 on this file: http://btownbanners.com/public/js/lazyload.min.js That's a sign of server overload or the worst web server setup you can imagine.
4. Your reverse DNS points to plusminussports.com ... uh... what?
5. bluehost.com - You're hosted on a crappy host. Avoid all EIG brands like the plague and jump out of any brands EIG acquires. Doesn't matter if they were good, they will start sucking.

... Actually, I was listing them as I see it. But I find it meaningless to do any further diagnostic. Swap hosts. Yours sucks.

Appreciate the quick response. What's a better host to switch to? Will they easily be able to transfer my site over?

EDIT: I see we can't talk about hosts... I'll check out that website first and try to find a good host. Just really don't want to go wrong again...

[Grumpy]

Appreciate the quick response. What's a better host to switch to? Will they easily be able to transfer my site over?

I edited my post before seeing your reply. See above.

You should ask the sales if they can transfer your site. It's up to your new host. Though, I'm sure any host that's not running out of someone's basement will have plenty of experience transferring out of bluehost. :P

[BtownBanners]

Thanks Grumpy. Hopefully this new host will help fix all these issues. Will any hosts help optimize a site? Like you said, there were a TON of problems with mine outside of the host...

[Grumpy]

No. Shared hosting providers will not help you (in general) with your optimizations. You're asking something far too costly for a few dollars/month. You're looking at $100~1000 for quality professional sys admins to optimize & manage systems (that at monthly for manage).

Two immediate problems I saw were that background image being too big & your css/js files being scattered. You can fix the first by just replacing it with a compressed version (never use png unless small dimensions). And you can fix the latter by turning on minify in ipb settings. But doing the latter in your current system might make things worse as it requires more processing at first -- which you lack. But still, your biggest problem is the host right now. Resolve your biggest problems and work your way down the priority stack. In principle that is... I suppose you can replace your background image right away.

Also, I don't know if bluehost still does this, but after you move, check the files to see if there's any bluehost's files lingering around and delete them. Like, they used to inject their favicon on every site. Pretty spyware like policies of theirs despite paying for it... Just check what files IPB are supposed to be composed of on the top level and see what else you have. No need to bother to delve into subfolders... probably.

[CheersnGears]

Bluehost booted me out years ago for running IPS... IPS is just too heavy of a software for them. They're only interested in rather static webpages that don't use much database back end because they grossly oversell their servers.

[Aussie Cable]

Just using smush.it to compress your background image saves plenty:

Before = 757.19 KB

After = 576.48 KB

Savings = 180.72 KB or 23.87%

Here is a copy of your smushed background image, you can do some comparisons yourself and see if you can tell it's been compressed.

Personally, your background image loads for me (original image) in 5.39 seconds (from your server). If it was optimized, you'd save on load-time.

An optimized version, loads in 3.86 seconds (but that is from another server).

Good luck :thumbsup:

EDIT: Converting to webp, you get even better results, but admittedly, that is a little harder to convert and code.