large gap between start render and DOM loaded

Web Performance Discuss Test Results
1

Hi, the website I have been working on has a slow response time and I was hoping someone could help explain the performance test results so that I can fix it.

Here are the results for my test:
[url]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141001_AE_17VJ/1/details/[/url]

There is a really big gap between the start render event and DOM loaded. I’m not really sure what that means… I’ve looked at a few other waterfalls and my results look like nothing else I’ve seen. Is the gap due to js maybe?

I tried removing the flexslider, and that did improve the speed by like 4 secs so I’m thinking the js for the flexslider is slowing things down? I need to use the flexslider in the final design though, so I’m not sure what I can do to increase the page speed while still using the flex slider.

2

Try downloading / running as much JavaScript as possible after document complete. See if you can defer downloading Twitter and Facebook JavaScript especially.

3

It’s not shown on the waterfall but testing it in the chrome network tab now the php file is taking 6s+ to load. This would explain the gap.

So there is a good chance there’s something not quite right with the php file/backend/server.

You could test this further by saving the php file as an html file on the server with the same scripts and see how long it takes to load.