The Best Web Page Speed Tester I've Ever Seen

If you run a web site, then it's important to ensure that it runs as fast as possible.  As we all know, if a site takes ages to load, we'll simply give up and try elsewhere.

There are 2 main problems when you're trying to troubleshoot web page loading times.  Firstly, the page might work perfectly OK on your own system, but is very slow when accessed from a connection on the other side of the world.  And it's very hard to test such things without getting on a plane, or calling a friend and asking them to check the page for you.

Secondly, a web page normally comprises many elements, and each of these generally gets loaded separately.  So there's no point in timing the overall page load - you need to know which of the page's elements is causing the bottleneck.

So that's the problem.  Is there an easy solution?  And is it free?  Yes, and yes.  And it's incredibly simple to use.

Go to www.webpagetest.org and enter the URL of the page you want to test.  Then, from the drop-down menu, choose where you want the system to test your page from.  There's a whole host of locations and countries.  You can even specify which browser you want the test to use.

After a few minutes, you get to see the test results.  In addition to a screen shot of the page in your selected browser, you also get to see lots of fascinating, detailed graphs and charts which will help you troubleshoot problems.  The screen shot below shows just one of the charts for my personal web site, showing the loading times for each of the elements on the home page. Amazing!