CSS files - how to load faster

[wheel]

I've used a program to generate pages from one format to web format. The program uses one monster CSS file for all the pages. So I've got css files to the tune of 10-30megs. Yeah, I wish I was kidding.

Any thoughts on how to decrease the page load speed as a result of this problem? First page takes forever to load.

[Swanny007]

A few things that come to mind....
-gzip it, send it compressed
-Run it through one of those online CSS optimizer scripts
-Manually go through and remove unnecessary code
-Serve the CSS file through a CDN like MaxCDN so it's closer to end users
-Or use a new layout ;-)

[g1smd]

Is that one of those "systems" that gives every content paragraph a new ID then writes a block of CSS to style that paragraph? You end up with the same CSS definition repeated several thousand times but with a different ID for each one. I'd like to find the idiot that writes such junk and give him or her a piece of my mind. Using a class would have reduced the CSS to a few hundred lines.

[wheel]

Well, it's an automated process. hard to clean up manually.

- I've called my host and asked them to gzip css files.
- I tried an online css optimizer. It broke :).
- I looked at CDN's, there's only one in my country and it's not affordable for this site. However, the site is not on my main server, it's on a local hosting company. I suppose I could put the css files on my main server that is on huge pipes in this country and then reference them by IP address. That's probably 99% as good as a cloud anyway since my main host is already peer sharing with all the big ISP's in this country. It's some work, may be worth it if the site grows.

I think my best bet right now is to get the output gzipped. Estimates using an online tool showed it'll save about 92% since it's all text.

I appreciate the ideas, and welcome any others.

[Swanny007]

For the long term, you need to reduce the size of that file, big time.

[BillyS]

So I've got css files to the tune of 10-30megs.

Do you get any visitors to that site? Even with a fast connection, it's going to take several seconds to load a page. Personally, I wouldn't wait that long for a page to load - I'd think the site is broken.

My advice... find another system.

[wheel]

Using another system isn't an option right now. The content is generated and I can't restart - the effort outweighs the benefit. Yes, the first page loads slow. Subsequent pages are fast because the css file is cached.

Looks like the style sheet has a bunch of duplicate stuff, like
style-type1 {stuff}
style-type1 {more stuff}
style=type2 {stuff}
style-type2 {more stuff}

then individual pages reference some combination of those style-types.

I think compressing the output is the start. After that I may move it to my main server, to help increase speed. After that I think I'm going to have to bust the css sheet into 50 or 100 different sheets, one for each style-type. THen I can run a program through each page to remove the reference to the master css sheet, and replace it with references to just the style sheet references that are included in that page.

Was hoping for an easy answer :).