This is the last part of my series on speed optimizing for small websites. It’s a list of links to all the speed optimization tools and (re)sources that I’ve found useful for my work. Updated, 12-11-12.

There are quite a lot of links here, so I’ve ordered them in categories for you. Of course, a listing like this can never be comprehensive. There’s a lot happening in the speed optimization field and I’m pretty sure this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future, so I’ll try to regularly update this page with new, relevant links. Make sure to bookmark this page.
And if you think I missed out on something important, or if you have further suggestions or tips, please let me know via the comments section below. Your input is very much appreciated!

Page speed test tools

• Yahoo YSlow – page speed test plugin.
• Google PageSpeed – download the plugin, or test your site online.
• Google Speed Tracer – plugin to help you fix performance problems.
• GTMetrix – page speed test site, with PageSpeed and YSlow scores.
• Pingdom Tools – easy to use page speed test site.
• Webpagetest – very comprehensive page test site, the best I’ve found.
• Zoompf – another very detailed speed test site.
• Which Loads Faster? – compare load speed of two sites at the same time.
• gzipWTF – test if your gzip compression is working.
• GIDZipTest – another test site for gzip compression.
• HTTP Compression Test – yet another gzip tester.
• Added on December, 14th: Sitespeed.io, a speed test tool that can analyze multiple pages of a website instead of just a single URL.

Image optimization

• Smush It – Yahoo’s image optimizer, support batch processing.
• ImageOptim – image optimizer for Mac OS X
• PunyPNG – very good PNG compression tool
• Online Image Optimizer – optimize your GIFs, JPG’s and PNG’s online.
• ImageAlpha – converts 24-bit PNG to 8-bit with full alpha channel.

Minification tools

• YUI Compressor – Yahoo’s JavaScript and CSS minification.
• Online YUI Compressor – JS/CSS compression using YUI Compressor
• JSMini – Online Javascript & jQuery Minifier Tool
• JS Minifier – another Javascript minification tool.
• Google Closure Compiler – compiles from JavaScript to better JavaScript, though results are debatable.

Content delivery networks (CDN’s)

No ‘big names’ here, CDN’s for small website owners only ;-)

• CloudFlare – CDN and website security, with free options.
• Coral – free CDN, extremely easy to implement but results vary.
• MaxCDN – affordable CDN solutions.
  (note: I am in no way affiliated to MaxCDN)

Advanced speed optimizing techniques

• Conditional Loading for Responsive Designs
• Responsive Images – part 1 and part 2.
• How to serve small images for small res devices and bigger ones for higher res devices.
• Lazy Load Plugin for jQuery
• lazierLoad – Javascript Image Lazy Loader for Prototype
• ImageLoader – lazy load images with Yahoo’s excellent YUI library.
• Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques – from Smashing Magazine.
• Clever PNG Optimization Techniques – from Smashing Magazine.
• PNG Optimization Guide: More Clever Techniques
• @font-face and performance – Steve Souders on tweaking webfonts.
• Web Font Performance: Weighing @font-face Options and Alternatives

Reference articles

• Web Performance Best Practices – from Google
• Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site – from Yahoo
• Proof that speeding up websites improves online business.
• Website Performance: What To Know and What You Can Do
• How To Speed Up WordPress Load Times – valid for any site
• Using site speed in web search ranking – from Google Webmaster Blog
• Optimize your Website – some useful tips.
• YSlow: Yahoo’s Problems Are Not Your Problems
• Web Site Optimization: 13 Simple Steps
• Slow Websites cost the US Ecommerce Market $504 Billion in 2011
• stevesouders.com – speed optimization guru hors categorie
• Strangeloop Network – excellent blog from more optimization guru’s.
• The Psychology of Web Performance
• Latency 101: What is latency and why is it such a big deal?
• Our need for web speed: It’s about neuroscience, not entitlement
• Visualizing Web Performance – Infographics about site speed and user behavior.
• Americans Don’t Have Time For Slow Websites – Infographic
• The Comprehensive Guide to Saving Images for the Web
• How Fast Is… The Windows 8 Launch Website?
• How Fast Is… Apple.com? – learn from mistakes by the pro’s :-)
• Why Web Performance Matters – report by Gomez [PDF]
• Akamai Reveals 2 Seconds as the New Threshold of Acceptability for eCommerce Web Page Response Times

Ecommerce speed optimization

• Fall 2012 State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed and Website Performance
• Speed Kills Conversion Rates [Infographic]
• Site speed: case studies, tips and tools for improving your conversion rate
• Why Slow Sites Will Kill Your Online Sales
• Website Response Times – by Jakob Nielsen
• Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report – from Google’s Conversion Room Blog
• Magento on Steroids – Best practice for highest performance
• 101 ways to speed up your Magento e-commerce website
• Magento Optimization Guide – by GTMetrix
• Facebook Like Button = 84Kb or 1.340 Seconds?
• Turn on MySQL query cache to speed up query performance
• How to make SSL fast – by CloudFlare
• HTTPS Performance Tuning
• Why You Should Use ‘Cache-Control: public’ for Caching to Work with SSL

Mobile optimization

• Site speed: case studies, tips and tools for improving your conversion rate
• Give mobile users what they want: clearer, simpler, faster sites
• Mobile UI performance considerations
• Optimize for mobile – Google Page Speed recommendations
• Make the mobile web faster

Speed optimizing for WordPress

• WordPress Performance Optimization (from 6 seconds to 1)
• W3 Total Cache – WordPress Plugin
• Optimizing WordPress Loading Speed With header.php & .htaccess
• WordPress Optimization Bible – really!
• WordPress Caching: What’s the best Caching Plugin?

Additions, November 12th

• 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites – the ‘original’ list by Steve Souders, with links to more in-depth explanations behind each rule
• Page Speed Optimization Tips You’ve Probably Never Heard Before – some very interesting ideas here!
• Ultimate Guide To Web Optimization (Tips & Best Practices)
• CSS Shorthand Guide – squeeze out every possible byte from your stylesheets…
• Delete WordPress Tags to Decrease Server Load
• This is your brain on a slow website [INFOGRAPHICS]
• Adaptive Images in HTML – very interesting concept, haven’t had the chance yet to test it though.
• Media Queries Can’t Be Used for Resolution Negotiation – interesting read, puts my recent post on retinafying your WordPress site in a different light…

Phew, you made it to the end of the list! Did I miss something, or did you notice a mistake? Or do you have a good tip to share? If so, please post a comment below!

This was the last part of my series on speed optimizing for small websites. Soon I’ll start a series of articles on developing a web shop optimized for mobile devices. Apart from talking about optimizing for various different use(r) scenarios compared to desktop sites, I’ll also cover mobile speed optimization in more detail. And along the way I’ll discuss the pros and cons of responsive webdesign for ecommerce sites. Please stay tuned!