More Page Optimization Fun

We've been working on many subtle put important page rendering improvements here at Guild Launch. We have fast servers, fast databases and multiple fast connections to the Internet in our datacenter. So, we've been working on squeezing everything we can out of the user's perception of rendering times.

To that end, in Version 6.1 of Guild Launch we've done the following:

1. We moved many of the static image, JavaScript and CSS static files to separate domain names.
2. We moved the WoWHead and WarDB item hover scripts to being loaded after the page loads.

The seperate servers for the static images allows your browser to make more requests to our servers for the content it wants. This is very important because it reduces 100s of miliseconds of wait time along the way of the page load. It also allows more individual files to be downloaded at the same time which makes your internent connection work more for you. Those of you on broadband should see an noticeable speedup in the page render time.

The WoWHead and WarDB scripts can be very slow to load and WarDB is down at times. So, we've moved them to being the very last thing that loads on the page. They still load in time for you to interact with the hovers, but they load just after all the images and the page has loaded. This change provides a considerable boost in perceived page rendering since you no longer have to wait if those particular files are loading slowly. If WarDB is down the page will still load before the browser waits on the file. This is a wonderfully good thing, especially on pages in which you don't interact with the functionality they provide.

In Version 6.2 we'll be optimizing page loads even further. Then in Version 6.3 we'll be adding some more caching control options to make your browsers cache work better for you.

Our servers and databases already create 80-90% of pages on Guild Launch in under 2/10s of a second, and a great deal in under 1/10th of a second. In many cases the page rendering performance improvements are just improvements in how you perceive the page loading, but as they say 'Perception is Reality'. The idea of these performance optimizations is to get those quickly created pages down your internet tubes and rendered in your browser faster. We hope you enjoy the result!

-Stephen