I heartily support the upgrade to a new & updated  website look, but do have a few issues that need addressing.

Page loading speed is one of them.

I guess it may be something to do with using Joomla ( a 'paint by numbers' website in my book), but the page load speed of this new forum is pathetic.

As a stating point, I suggest you look at the background image size, and whether it is 'cache enabled' to allow it to be downloaded as part of the overall page draw, or whether it downloads  with each page refresh.

Not trying to be negative, but gee this is website is slow!!!

I'm not seeing a problem, Pete.

Each page has a 'time to create' stamp and typically I get 0.3 to 0.6 of a second re-load time.

Tou're obviously experiencing more than that?

Body_Bg.jpg is 335.54 KB in size.

This tries to load as a new background image each time I open a new page, resulting in 5- 6 seconds of delay.
There is no reason that this image could not be reduced to 50-60 KB with a bit of tweaking.

I applaud the work done on the new website - I'm simply trying to make it better.

Pete,

I note that you are still having issues with IE8 and that you have slow re-load page times.  I'm not, and at this stage, I haven't had any other feedback on slow timing.

Dare i say, could it be something with your system?

Yes, I can go back to Alex with your info, but I'm trying to understand if it is just an isolated case.

Sorry Serge, but I have verified this issue on other XP systems too.

As my bread & butter is made from fixing PC issues, I would hope that I can offer legitimate problems for you to fix, not just something that is related to a single malfunctioning PC.

my two cents, im not having any loading issue at all every thing pops up within a millisecond

Do a Check on your Download speed

There is nothing wrong with my download speed, but thanks for the suggestion Peter.

The problem is that the image file sizes are excessive.

I have attached optimised versions of them that are smaller file sizes (if you wish to use them).
They are less than 25% of the existing file sizes with little or no image degradation.

Background image

Rotating Banner image 1

Rotating banner image 2

Rotating Banner image 3

Those images seemed to take a while to download when I opened them first time. Clicking on them a second time they came up straight away. That was Chrome/Win7. 

Pete, all we can do is take it up with Alex. I didn't notice any great loss of image quality on the laptop with what you supplied.

Mat R wrote:
That is the difference between a 'cached' image, and a 'non-cached' one. I get a slow page load in IE, and it seems to be because the background image is not being cached. Using the optimised image I have supplied will get around it.

Mat R wrote:
Thanks - that sounds fine. I'm just trying to help get this website working better for everyone, not just people with the latest gadgets.