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Hosting FAQ - Web Hosting Frequently Asked Questions
Yes you can. By optimizing all
the graphics like banners, logo's, photos and other images on your
site. When you insert your images into your website, the dimesions
of that image reflect as small, but find out what the file size
and dimensions are for that image. If your website page takes
longer than 10 Seconds to loads (on broadband connection), then
your visitors will not wait around too long and would will look
around for another website that will give them the information they
desire faster.
Fortunately, there is a solution:
you can optimize your graphics for your website. Your graphics should
be in either .gif or .jpg formats (.gif works best for logos and
navigation buttons, while .jpg works best for photographs.) The
idea is to reduce the filesize of your images so that they take
less data bytes as possible while retaining acceptable quality.
This can be done using free on-line image optimization
tools. One of the best ones out there is Gifbot,
by Netmechanic. They have a easy to use web-based interface
that works like this: you upload your image, they process it, and
almost instantaneously they will give you several lighter versions
of your image for you to choose. Pick the image that takes the fewest
bytes while still retaining and acceptable quality level. It is
not uncommon to reduce the weight of a picture by up to 70% with
no noticeable decrease in quality (especially if the image is in
.jpg format.)
Another useful tip is to use thumbnails. Thumbnails
are smaller versions of a picture or image that are hyperlinked
to its actual size version. The thumbnail will load fast, and by
clicking on it your visitors will be able to see the actual size
version. A great free tool for this that is very easy to use and
can create thumbnails of 100's of photos at once is Easy
Thumbnails.
Use all these techniques and you will have a
website that loads a lot faster for your visitors and keeping them
happy, as well as saving more of your hosting space and bandwidth
on your web hosting account.
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