GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#51

Post by bluesmoon » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

Your math is somewhat incorrect. First, average[1] page load time is only relevant if your data distribution is a perfect bell curve. It never is. It's more likely to be Log-normal, in which case a Geometric mean is a better number, but again it it's unlikely to be perfectly Log-normal. It's likely to be double-humped (though you may not notice it), but the median and the entire distribution are very necessary. You'll find that the median load time is typically lower than the arithmetic mean, but the 95th or 98th percentile is typically much higher.

Secondly, you cannot simply divide by 70% to get the load time for 70% of your users, because again, that assumes a very specific distribution (a linear distribution, which doesn't exist for any site with more than 5 hits). What you really need to measure is the "empty-cache" experience, which is different from the "first-visit" experience, and is harder to measure since it's hard (but not impossible) to tell when the user's cache is empty.

Lastly, you're assuming a user drop-off rate without looking at your own data for user drop-off.

You should probably use a real RUM tool that shows you your entire distribution, but also shows you how users convert or bounce based on page load time. Looking at actual data can be surprising and enlightening (I've been looking at this kind of data for almost a decade and it still surprises me and forces me to change my assumptions).

My company (SOASTA) builds a RUM tool (mPulse), which you can use for free. Other companies like pingdom, neustar, keynote, etc. also have RUM solutions, or you can also use the opensource boomerang library (https://github.com/lognormal/boomerang/ disclaimer, I wrote this... BSD licensed) along with the opensource boomcatch server (https://github.com/nature/boomcatch).

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#52

Post by ninkendo » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #24

The article notes that DNSimple's ALIAS records avoid this problem. Would the same thing be true of CloudFlare's new "flattened CNAME" records?

I didn't see such a note, but I'm not sure it would be true, either.

DNSimple doesn't actually implement a new DNS record type, it simply puts a TXT record on your domain that says "ALIAS for some.fqdn", and presumably it causes their DNS servers to do a recursive lookup for you (to whatever's in the TXT record) when you try and look at the A record for the naked domain.

From github's DDoS prevention's point of view the result is the same: an A record lookup points to their IP. They don't know that you got there by way of looking at DNSimple's servers and their ALIAS technique.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#53

Post by allannienhuis » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #31

krenoten wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Numerous reputable entities have published reports demonstrating that users notice quite a lot. Amazon claims that every 100ms costs them 1% of revenue. Google claims 500ms costs them 20% of traffic. 5 seconds is a fucking eternity, and anything you expose to users on the web with such horrible performance will suffer greatly because of if. One exception may be banks. Users are more forgiving of latency as their…

I guess I find this plausible if we're talking about n ms multiplied by the number of resources loaded, and your page doesn't render progressively. If we're talking about total load time, I don't see why you'd even bother clicking a link if you weren't prepared to wait a few seconds for it to load. Edit: in the case of Google and Amazon, I can believe that being slow will cause users to defect to other services. I do…

Regarding giving up after 500ms: I don't think the issue is that people are consciously abandoning a site after a single page load that seems a bit slow. It's the cumulative burden of slightly slow pages that make the site slightly less attractive compared to other alternatives that respond faster. The differences are noticeable - if only subconsciously - and the result is that a portion of the users will move to the other service that just feels more responsive. Responsiveness of the site is part of the value being offered (even if people don't recognize it explicitly) For any site with significant volume of users and some effective competition for their service, this distinction results in measurable changes in use/conversions. I think the _actual_ change in user activity or conversions for s specific site would depend a whole lot on the nature of the service being offered and the alternatives available.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#54

Post by dkulchenko » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

dknecht wrote: post #2

You can actually use CloudFlare and stay on Github pages. In the CloudFlare DNS editor you can point your root at github's cname address and everything will work. If you choose not to enable CloudFlare proxy service you can still use the DNS to flatten Github's cname. See http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc-...

You can, but then you get automated emails from Github Support telling you that your DNS config is wrong and that you should be using CNAMEs rather than A records (since Cloudflare flattens the virtual CNAMEs to As if you do a DNS lookup).

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#55

Post by Joeboy » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

insensible wrote: post #50

Joeboy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I find this plausible if we're talking about n ms multiplied by the number of resources loaded, and your page doesn't render progressively. If we're talking about total load time, I don't see why you'd even bother clicking a link if you weren't prepared to wait a few seconds for it to load. Edit: in the case of Google and Amazon, I can believe that being slow will cause users to defect to other services. I do…

Look at page speed vs. bounce rate in Google Analytics for any well-trafficked site. People are frequently casually clicking around, and the faster you have content up on the screen the more casual users will engage. By analogy, to get into a different mindset, think about channel-surfing on the TV. If other channels show a picture in 0.2s, and as you flip around there's a channel that takes 0.8s to show a picture, a…

Thank you for replying! I got a staggering number of unexplained downvotes before anybody was prepared to talk to me.

Thinking about it I can well believe that if you want people to stay on your site and click around, probably because you want to show them ads or products, a small delay will impact on the number of clicks. I would imagine that's not the motivation for most github pages sites though.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#56

Post by dieulot » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:23 PM UTC

kyledrake wrote: post #45

Hi, Kyle with Neocities here. We support custom domains for sites too! We use an A record right now for root domains because DNS does not support root domain CNAMEs, and as a consequence have very similar problems. The only practical way to deal with the problem is to redirect root visitors to www. If you go to google.com, you will notice that they do the same thing and redirect to www from a proxy somewhere. Our nex…

Aw, that’s a shame. :(

Thanks for your honesty! I updated the article.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#57

Post by michaeljdeeb » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

I believe these redirects are also the reason why open graph data for Facebook and Twitter cards won't render.

Running my site through their validators said too many redirects occurred.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#58

Post by probonogeek » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:36 PM UTC

msuss wrote: post #42

probonogeek wrote: post #30

Can someone explain how "Visitors to this site’s index page have an average page load time of 3.5 seconds. 70% of those are here for the first time. 3.5 ÷ 70% = 5. So first time visitors have an average page load time of 5 seconds." makes any kind of mathematical sense? If only 10% of visitors were first time, would that mean their average page load speed was 35 seconds? This is some crazy use of the word "average".

The assumption is that repeat visitors have a load time of 0.

As a builder of an internal app that is essentially 99.999% repeat visitors, I need to figure out a way to replicate that behavior!

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#59

Post by philip1209 » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:36 PM UTC

If you are technical enough to understand (and care about) the implications of this issue, consider hosting on S3. Hosting costs me about $2 per month on lower-traffic websites. The s3_website gem makes it straightforward. Response times are reasonable and inelastic with regard to traffic.

If you are aiming for the fastest speed possible, check out the s3_website gem support for Cloudfront - you can host your whole static website through a CDN.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#60

Post by atmosx » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

Nice study, although a bit debatable but good catch whatsoever, made some points there.

However, Github hosting is made by programmers for programmers OR at least computer literate people. So it's exactly the group how ought to know when it's time to move to private hosting :-)