How to use Firebug To Speed Up Your Website

I’ve been using Firebug for a while now, but never realized this cool network debugging feature existed. It’s pretty easy to use and can help you speed up a slow website by pointing out what is taking your page so long to load.

I was recently working on a client’s site that was running super slow. It didn’t make sense as it was a very light WordPress template running only a handful of plugins. After running the Firebug network monitoring tab it quickly became obvious what the problem was. During the creation of this site we installed a number of jquery menus in order to find something that would fit the client’s needs. Each of these 4 scripts was taking about 12 seconds to time out before the rest of the page would load. 4 x12 seconds = lost visitor.

With the Firebug network monitor running we were quickly able to find the offending code and remove it. Bam now the page loads in less than 3 seconds.

I use Firebug. Where Do I find Network Monitoring?

With Firebug open click on the, “Net” tab, then choose the, “all”, sub tab under that. Then all you have to do is reload the page and watch as your scripts, images an included files load up. Each file will be displayed in seconds and milliseconds so you can quickly and easily see which ones are taking the longest to load.

Once you know what’s slowing your site down you can either remove the offending files or at least know where your page needs to be improved and seek out new options.

Website load times are crucial if you are serious about running a website that converts. As load times go up, bounces increase. If visitors have to wait too long for your site to load you can kiss them goodbye. Improve how your website loads and you’ll see viewer loyalty increase. Give your visitors what they want or go home.

Incoming search terms for the article:

• how to use firebug
• firebug to increase speed
• firebug speed load
• firebug speed
• how to find out why a web page is taking so long to load up
• how to speed up firebug
• how to use firebug to design a web site
• how to use firebug to find script loading time
• how to use firebug to find website problems
• how to using Firebug Net tab to know if jquery file get loaded

About Me:  Nate Balcom is a web designer and social media guru with over 11 years of experience in the web industry. He specializes in web design and development, SEO and social networking. You can follow him on Twitter here.