Web page size - does this cause problems

[markymark]

Hi all,

I am intrigued to know if the size of a web page has a deleterious effect on rankings. I am currently optimizing an e-commerce site- the page has about 80 images and the code itself is about 79k. All done with Dreamweaver and layers.

I am aware of problems spidering layers, so I will take care of that and I am also intending to use inline CSS to place the optimized text high up the code so the spiders reach it quickly. However, I suspect the overall size of the code is going to bring me down. I've got a lot riding on this project and cannot afford to mess up. There's some empty tags and things in there as well. Overall the code is horrendous- but I don't want to spend 2 days re-coding the page unless I have to. Dreamweaver- like FrontPage is an evil thing.

Mark

[Son_House]

Hi markymark welcome to WMW!

Seems like most people here feel that smaller is better. Brett has said many times that Google likes smaller pages.

On a personal note, 80 images sounds like a lot to me and could take a long time to load. Are they small and load fast? There are very few sites I will wait more than 10 seconds for them to load. You may get the page to rank well but people might not be willing to wait for it to load.

[Rhys]

Hi There
I stand with the previous entry. Large pages are out. I think it is pointless to get a page listed, let alone well ranked, if nobody will wait around to read it. 80kb of code, plus images, wouldn't even load on my 'phone line modem' at peak time. IMHO wed designers must post clean lean code to be in any way useful to their clients. I believe at least 90% of users (Worldwide) are dependant on copper lines and modems. To return to your point, i understand that some SE reviewers will penalise 'bloated' pages.

[markymark]

Son_house, cool name. The page actually downloads pretty fast. They are on a dedicated server and a lot of the images are sliced- creating more ****** code.

It seems to me that the consensus is that small (in code terms) pages is the best way to go. That's kinda what I thought- oh well, guess I've got some work to do.

If any one else has a different view please post it.

Mark

[knighty]

>Dreamweaver- like FrontPage is an evil thing.

awww its not that bad ;)

I have done some pages with Layers and I would reccomoend shifting all the layers to an external CSS file and all the scripts to an external JS file (if you have'nt already)

Also you said that you sliced the layers and that put in more code - You shouldnt have ANY extra code. If all you are doing is cutting up the image into sections why would that have anything to do with code??

[theperlyking]

Also you said that you sliced the layers and that put in more code - You shouldnt have ANY extra code. If all you are doing is cutting up the image into sections why would that have anything to do with code??

Some applications use tables to reconstruct the sliced image, even if layers and absolute positioning is used this is still extra code.

If you are using fireworks (i'm guessing since you are using dreamweaver) it inserts a lot of unneccesary code if it uses tables so you may be able to optimise this aspect.

Some browsers also have a limit to the number of concurrent connections they will open to a server so this could impact on the apparent loading time (i.e they may only be small images but if the browser is downloading lots of sliced images they will all have to queue up. Having said that its not something I've really noticed but it could be worth bearing in mind.

[knighty]

I should elaborate that when slicing images in fireworks DO NOT use fireworks to import the code!

ONLY export the images and then manually set up you table etc.

Fireworks produces some awful bloated and unecessary code stay well clear!