Homestore Template how many pages does it work best with?

[NDboots]

I'm still a newbie with Xara Web Designer Premium 11, but I'm liking it, especially for working with the graphics. I have been a Dreamweaver user. I'm having problems with the Homestore Template loading quickly from the server. This template has a nice visual feature, when one goes to another page, the page appears to rotate to the next page. However, it seems to often get stuck on the home page, when loading the accordion 2, which sittings are unaltered at default, only wording and graphics were changed. If on another page, and one presses to refresh the page, it goes back to reload the home page first, and then often gets stuck on the accordian 2 for sometimes a very long time, before reloading the page one was on. Other times, it loads very quickly. Is there such a thing as to many pages for this template? I have 24 pages currently, and I suppose that can be doubled with the mobile variant. The index.htm file with all these pages, is now a little over 1 mb in size. Could that cause the slow loading?

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

It sounds like Page Transitions which might be slowing the site down. Try the Conventional Site option (Website Properties > Web Export Options > Conventional Website option and if this loads faster then the speed problem is the page transitions. There are many page transitions and some might be faster than others.

[Acorn]

I think you will find that the delays are down to all the graphics that are also being downloaded. These are sitting in an index_htm_files folder.
You're running fast and slow as some images will have already been downloaded and cached locally. check by pressing Ctrl+F5 in your browser to clear this cache.

I would find an index.htm file for 24 pages to be 1 MB to be highly unusual.
It will not be doubled for a Variant as the images are typically smaller.

Export the site locally to a folder on your computer.
Open the folder and check file size of index.htm there.
Go into the index_htm_files folder and check you image file sizes.

If these are large, go into Xara and Utilities... > Optimise all images... - do read the pop-up advice regarding it being an unrecoverable step so work on a backup copy.

Remember a Supersite of 24 pages is the same as a viewer downloading 24 separate web pages all one after the other.
The one difference is your front page will appear first so try and make it lightweight and arresting so the viewer pauses there for a short time until everything gets loaded.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Welcome NDboots. A url link to your site is always helpful too.

[NDboots]

Thank you, sounds like I should make a duplicate folder and play around with that. This URL is temporary, but I am working on it here for now: akacoachandcompany.com/atest/ [Dead link]

[NDboots]

I don't think my earlier reply settled in. But, thank you for the advice, I'm trying those things and will see what might be a better option. In answer to the file size of the index.html, it is 1,107 KB.

In the test folder where I reduced the image quality, the index.html is 1,103 KB for the Supersite, reducing image quality did not reduce the index.html file size much. I tried adding URL earlier, but does not look like it was approved yet.

[NDboots]

The URL, this is temporary and will not work later: http://akacoachandcompany.com/atest/

[Egg Bramhill]

Looking at your link and doing Ctrl + F5 shows a great deal of downloads are required to load (in this case) the whole site. I suggest you follow Acorns advice and create your site as a conventional website, as the download is far to heavy at present.

[NDboots]

I agree, but the gal who wants this template, really likes the looks of the turning pages. So, I tried optimizing the images, and that seems to help. Thanks for the tips. Still learning but this software has some really nice features to it, just have to keep learning.