datool.ru pages now load faster: what we sped up

datool.ru pages now open noticeably faster. We have optimized the site's code: styles and scripts are bundled and minified, fonts and channel avatars are several times lighter, images are served through a CDN and load as you scroll, and the heavy tabs of a channel page come from a cache and start loading before you even click. The MAX channel catalog, the ratings, Today in MAX and any channel page now open almost instantly.

Speed matters for more than comfort. People close a slow page before the data arrives, and search engines take speed into account when ranking sites. Below we explain exactly what we sped up, with numbers wherever they can be measured honestly.

Fewer files: bundled styles and scripts

A channel page used to load 30 separate stylesheets and 31 scripts, and the home page 14 and 9. Every file is a separate request, and on mobile connections they noticeably delayed rendering.

Now styles and scripts are combined into a few shared files: a channel page loads 3 and 3, the home page 3 and 2. The look of the site did not change, and the order of styles is the same.

• Minification. Comments and extra whitespace have been stripped from the files. The channel page's styles now weigh 36 KB instead of 66 KB, and its scripts 28 KB instead of 59 KB. Other pages save about as much.
• Compression in transit. Static files are additionally compressed with brotli, which is about 15% more efficient than the familiar gzip.
• Long-term browser caching. Each file name contains a fingerprint of its contents. The browser downloads a file once and then takes it from its own cache until we release a new version.

Fonts and avatars several times lighter

• The PT Sans font in WOFF2 format weighs about 25 KB per style instead of roughly 120 KB, with every character still in place. The browser starts downloading the font right away, before parsing the styles, so text shows up in the right typeface sooner.
• Small avatars. In lists such as the catalog, ratings, Today in MAX, MAX statistics and channel tabs, avatars are shown as a small copy: 96 pixels and 1–2 KB instead of 320 pixels and up to 30 KB. On the Today page, avatars used to weigh about 0.75 MB; now they are roughly ten times lighter. The large avatar stays where it is needed: in the channel header and on the post page.
• WebP format. Avatars and post image previews are stored in WebP and scaled down to the sizes the site actually displays: a post preview is no more than 800 pixels on its longest side.

Images through a CDN and on scroll

Channel avatars and post images are delivered by a content delivery network (CDN) rather than the site's server. The CDN keeps copies of images closer to the visitor and takes load off our server.

Images load as you scroll: the browser does not spend time on images you have not reached yet. The exception is what is visible right away: the avatars of the Leaders of the day winners, the first catalog cards and the first rows of the ratings load immediately, so the top of the page appears in full.

Channel tabs: cached and loaded ahead

The channel page is the heaviest on the site: ten tabs, dozens of charts and calculations over thousands of posts. We sped it up in several steps.

• Ready-made tabs in a cache. A calculated tab is stored in a separate page cache: a week and a month for 10 minutes, a quarter for 30 minutes, a year and all time for an hour. When an entry expires, the visitor immediately sees the previous response while a fresh one is calculated in the background. Only the very first visitor for a period has to wait for the calculation.
• Loading before the click. A tab starts loading when you hover over its button or move to it with the keyboard. By the time you click, the response has usually arrived, and the tab opens without "Loading…". On a phone, the request goes out on tap.
• Ratings, collections, Today in MAX and MAX statistics are calculated in advance, once an hour, so the page only has to display a ready result.

A faster database

Part of the speed-up is invisible from the outside: we rewrote the slowest calculations.

• All-time totals used to take up to 53 seconds for channels with hundreds of thousands of posts. Now they come from daily statistics and take a fraction of a second.
• Posting hours month by month on the Posting schedule tab took up to 6 seconds on first load for the largest channels. Now the calculation runs on an hourly summary and takes about 0.05 seconds.
• Subscriber engagement for a full year is calculated one and a half to two times faster for large news channels: posts and attachments are read with a single query instead of several.
• Searching post text uses a full-text index, and looking up a channel by handle uses an exact index, so neither scans the whole table.

We benchmark every such speed-up on the largest channels first and only then release it.

Who will notice

• People browsing on a phone: fewer files and lighter images matter most on mobile connections.
• Analysts and advertisers: tabs of large channels for a year or all time no longer keep you waiting.
• Visitors coming from search: the page appears quickly, and search engines see a fast site.

How to check

1. Open Today in MAX: the leaders' avatars and the day's totals appear right away.
2. Go to the page of a large channel, for example Краснодарские известия (Krasnodar News).
3. Hover over the Post reach tab and click it: the data opens without a wait.
4. Scroll the channel catalog or the ratings: avatars load as you go.

Frequently asked questions