# The initial page load

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-initial-page-load/17323>\
**Category:** Site feedback\
**Created:** [July 8, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-initial-page-load/17323 "2014-07-08T02:37:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2014, 7:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-initial-page-load/17323/3 "2014-07-08T07:57:47Z")

</div>

I spent some time tuning today, after my fixes we now are able to do an initial render in 3.5 seconds:

[http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708\_QJ\_AMX-r:1-c:0](http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708_QJ_AMX-r:1-c:0)

My fixes included:

1. Ensuring we compress all our dynamic and static content at a much higher level (10-15% network savings)
2. Ensuring last modified date ships with all assets (avatars, letter avatars, cdn assets) - improves cdn perf
3. Serving statically compressed assets where possible

This is pretty good considering we are

1. Serving meta over HTTPS
2. Our CDNs HTTPS performance is sub par
3. We have no way of rendering anything before all the JS and CSS downloads.

The nature of the “JS application” beast is that rendering happens on the client side, this is a limitation of Ember.JS, it is possible that some time in the next few years we will be able to render the html server side. But … we would be talking a major architectural shift to support that.

Considering sites like Vanilla (a more traditionally designed non HTTPS site) take 2 seconds

[http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708\_CW\_ARE-r:1-c:0](http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708_CW_ARE-r:1-c:0)

And that IPBoards takes 2 seconds

[http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140708\_7H\_AV4/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140708_7H_AV4/)

And that Discourse on non HTTPS without a CDN on digital ocean takes 3 seconds

[http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708\_9A\_AXE-r%3A1-c%3A0&thumbSize=200&ival=100&end=visual](http://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=140708_9A_AXE-r%3A1-c%3A0&thumbSize=200&ival=100&end=visual)

So yeah, we are a second slower on initial render than the competition and about 1.5 seconds off from leaders in this area like say stackoverflow [http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140708\_VJ\_AYX/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140708_VJ_AYX/)

But… on the upside due to the fact we only need JSON to navigate around a site we perform significantly better once the site is loaded than traditional apps when dealing with constrained networks.

Its a balancing act, eventually I hope to have a server rendering story, but for the time being I think we are doing quite well.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-initial-page-load/17323)._