Hi, my index page (which is probably the biggest page), and all the pictures make a total of 41.5kb.

Do you think this is too large, little big, perfect, tiny? I expect almost all my users to have high bandwidth connections; however, they all won't.

45kb is great. I still think keeping page size low is best and, frankly, I think better design emerges from such thinking. Even though I'm always on broadband, all it takes is a backbone hiccup or a high-load server to cause the loading of a page to slow to a crawl.

thats nothing (in my opinion)

Thats pretty good, I am sure that most of my sites wouldn't hit that mark on the front page. I thought that it would really matter with the search engines, but it seems not to really have affected one of my main sites ( www.rovercam.com ) from being too badly penalized for shoving 12 320x240 pics, rotating banners and etc. Hey its not my site, I started with 400k and it was still #1 in yahoo and .. well I dropped it to 200 something k at one time ( I havent checked in a while ) but we got ranked really well in google after that.

Once that happened, I didn't worry quite as much, but I do plan well for my modem users ( as I am on one now ).

Wow, good news to my ears.

Thank you for your knowledge

that's rather light for me !!
heavy pages are those that make 120-150KB

hehe 41.5kb is almost nothing, when you start hitting the 300's or so start to worry

That is a good file size.

A good place to check your total filesize is this website:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/


I personally never exceed 100kb for a page. There are many users (approx. 60% still as far as I know) who still are on slow dial up modems and it would be a shame if they were unable to view your site due to too heavy page loading times.

I always weigh out the importance of imagery on my site as opposed to the importance of content. As content always takes precedence for my sites, I sort of put my own graphics into something like an analysis cue. Which ones are really important as they compliment the site? Which ones are essential and express the purpose of the site? Which graphics convey the general atmosphere/feel of my site? Which ones can be replaced with text?
After having evaluated these questions for myself, I then throw out the graphic stuff that have a smaller relevance and can easily be replaced with good typography. The images that do remain in my layout will then be optimized in size. Depending on color composition, I save them as .gif or .jpg = 60%-80%. Many times I save them in both formats to compare filesizes.
A general thumb-of-rule for me is to always keep pages as light as possible and never hit the 100kb mark.

Regards,

Maleika

I like that page optimization link. Just for giggles I put in my rovercam site. It had a few things to say about it. .. hehe. It was only 193k though, so I am impressed ( I had to reduce size without changing all the pics / content .. look its not easy )

The bottom line is that I think google & other search engines take size into consideration but dont dock you that hard -if- they deem your content is valid. In our case that site is updated everyday for 5-6 + years on the front page. The engines took notice!

That fle size is nothing to worry about. Especially on a broadband connection

yeah to be honest, unless its really huge, i give very little thought to filesize... i dont like sacrificing quality for filesize...

Also remember that most of your images should cache making the following pages quicker to load. If my first page is say 50K, after the external style sheets, javascripts, and all the header & navigation images load the next page that would be around 50K is only 30K or less because of the caching.

Ask someone with 56k ;]

It really depends on how much space you have in the first place. Obviously the more space you have, the bigger your files can be without a problem..just make sure you have enough space for the file...

sorry to disagree with you... but it has very little to do with how much space you have....

5MB of space is cheap, but a 5MB page will piss off all your visitors

exactly even a page of 1MB will let you loose your visitors

yes that size is nothing to worry about.

My frontpage is 196 KB.

What exactly are you putting in your files!? 200kb?

depending what the site is, its easy to reach that or more....

Well, my site is a gaming fan site. There is usually a picture/thumbnail accomapnying each news item. My main page news has like 10-15 news items and they add up. Add that to the layout graphics, ad banner, and texts and you have 200 KB.

200kb isn't that bad. I think that 300kb is when you should start to worry. Other then that, filesize doesn't matter to me. Of course, i've never coded a site big enough to even think about size. The code probably totals 5kb and the images (if any) add another 20kb + the background image (1kb). Thats a mere 26. Betcha can't go smaller than that.

Here's my site:
http://www.geocities.com/moorchsoc/

Wow, I remember when I first got started and we were all on 28k or 33.6k modems and it was a rule to never go above 40k! Most sites these days are much more hefty due to the growth in high-speed internet.

I will say however, that while you have a little more room to play with these days, a lot still does depend upon your target market. There are a ton of consumers out there who still only surf and buy using their 56k / AOL connections! This is why sites like Amazon, Yahoo and Google are so simple and light, they have a wide customer base and a ton of traffic.

Anyway, I think what most of the posts here suggest is valid, but in the end, I think it is also important to understand who your target market is and let that help you determine the features and graphics you use for a particular site (i.e. a high-tech video game company most likely won't have a 40kb home page, as most likely, a small town church site won't require a 300kb home page, etc.).

Corey

Hehe, so true...

Heh, I think 50kb - 75kb is about right anything over 100kb is heavy.

For a general site, a 10 second load time or less for a modem connection is quite reasonable. This includes the HTML, CSS and JavaScript (these all must load before anything on the page shows) and it includes any images that are necessary to be able to use the site.

Let's say a modem user can download 4.5 KB per second. That means that the site would have to be 45 KB or less for the site to download in 10 seconds or less.

It's usually not a large problem if you exceed this by much. You do want to make your site load as fast as possible, but if there is a justifiable reason your page takes longer to load, then having a larger page is fine.