JS/CSS minify explanation

  • Resolved ChromaDot

    (@soojooko)


    6 years, 2 months ago

    Hi. I enabled minification of CS and JS on one of my websites, but noticed no difference. When inspecting the page load in Chrome devtools, all the files are still separate with no combining; the request count is the same as with the feature turned off.

    I was under the impression that this feature should combine files into one. Am I not understanding this correctly?

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author Hristo Pandjarov

    (@hristo-sg)

    SiteGround Representative

    No, we do not combine files, only minify them. JS combination is not safe at all and can cause multiple problems.

    Furthermore, we strongly believe and support HTTPS and HTTP2 which makes JS file combination useless in majority of cases.

    Check out the source of your site if you see something.min.js instead of something.js this means that we’ve minified them successfuly. You can compare those files in size through FTP, SSH or our File Manager tool in cPanel and see how much smaller they are ??

    I tried multiple tests with GTMetrix on different websites with different configurations, mostly to find out SG Optimizer minification loading times and I can tell that Autoptimize minification & concatenation gives faster loading times.

    Thread Starter ChromaDot

    (@soojooko)

    Hi Hristo

    I only asked as on the ‘frontend optimization’ page, the description reads “Combine and minify your JavaScript/CSS files” – which implies they will be combined. Maybe you guys should tweak the text and remove the word ‘combine’ to avoid confusion.

    Plugin Author Hristo Pandjarov

    (@hristo-sg)

    SiteGround Representative

    That’s my bad, will fix the string in the next update.

    As for GTMetrix, they still use HTTP1 to test and continue suggesting script combination which isn’t the best all things considered. It may help only with sites that have way to many resources loaded in a render-blocking way.

    Thanks for the explanation on GTMetrix Hristo.
    Do you know another performance testing tool which uses HTTP2?

    Plugin Author Hristo Pandjarov

    (@hristo-sg)

    SiteGround Representative

    https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
    https://tools.pingdom.com
    https://www.webpagetest.org

    Note that all testers try to disable your cache and analyze as dynamically as possible and some of them manage to do it better than others…

    I tried to repeat the tests using the 3 tools linked by Hristo (thanks for your help!), the tests showed exactly the same results of GTMetrix: Autoptimize minification gives better performance.

    https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
    84 vs 59

    https://tools.pingdom.com/
    717 ms vs 835 ms
    88 vs 81

    https://www.webpagetest.org/
    3.077s vs 3.577s

    JS minification by SG Optimizer breaks a few websites…

    Plugin Author Hristo Pandjarov

    (@hristo-sg)

    SiteGround Representative

    Autoptimize combines your files which gives better results in GTMetrix. Unfortunatelly, GTMetrix don’t take into consideration http2 yet. So it’s up to you to decided whether you want a faster website for your customers or a higher fictional score in an online tool ??

    You probably misunderstood my post. I tested a few websites with the tools that you provided in your previous post, not with GTMetrix.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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