For one thing I keep getting different results without actually changing anything.
[url]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110519_87_MZT6/[/url]
In Firefox
[url]http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110519_Z7_MZTA/[/url]
In Chrome a few minutes later.
I’m using the free Cloudflare service and it is evidently being picked up as a CDN sometimes and not at other time.
My other concerns are the CSS and JS combining and the Cookies score. I’ve browsed around and seen that the cookies thing probably isn’t worth worrying about, but the combining bothers me. I’m using W3 Total Cache in this wordpress install and I know the plugin is having some issues lately. I’ve applied manual fixes per this topic:
[url][Plugin: W3 Total Cache] 0.9.2.1 still BAD -> FTP details | WordPress.org
and the site seems very fast. Google Page Speed rates it at 86/100 and YSlow puts it at 83/100. I’m wondering if W3 still isn’t doing it’s job correctly.
Any input on resolving these issues is appreciated.
Did you make the cloudflare change recently or has it been running on them for a while? The CDN detection is done by performing a DNS lookup and then looking for the CNAME or reverse IP information and sometimes that can bounce back and forth for up to a week while the DNS changes propagate (it doesn’t have anything to do with the browser you use to submit the test).
The combining definetly looks like a problem though. In W3TC you actually need to manually tell it what files to combine/merge (though they have an automated process to help you with it). Did you give it a list of the files to combine?
Thanks,
-Pat
No I have not given it a list. I was set up manually on another site I run and it worked fine but the recent upgrade to the plugin dumped all the manually input addresses. I switched it to auto to see how it works and evidently it isn’t working at all. The last two versions of W3TC have had major issues and I’m assuming there is some work being done to fix it. Right now there are some manual reconfigurations of a few plugin files and the .htaccess to temporarily fix it, but auto minify settings still don’t seem to work. I did try a few manual adds with no apparent change in the results so I don’t think the plugin is doing it’s job. I may have to just wait for an update to resolve the issue.