# How big of a website is too big? **URL:** \ **Category:** random\ **Created:** [July 15, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977 "2008-07-15T05:46:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![REEF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@REEF](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/REEF)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/1 "2008-07-15T05:46:05Z")
Okay so I recently made a website thats less than 1MB. It loads different swfs (ranging from 10KB to 300KB) upon navigation clicks. Someone tells me that this is “HUGE” and that it’s not very practical. I’m feeling like crap because the website isn’t that graphic heavy and yet it’s so big according to this poohead. Any thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![saxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@saxx](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/saxx)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:02am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/2 "2008-07-15T06:02:17Z")
I think its kind of big, try to trim it down a bit, and make sure to have a cool preloader ---
**Author:** ![nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@nobody](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/nobody)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:04am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/3 "2008-07-15T06:04:15Z")
^what are you basing that off of? No I don’t think that’s too big at all considering people regularly have multiple 100k+ graphics on just plain html/css sites these days. It’s not tiny by any means, but it’s certainly not too large. ---
**Author:** ![saxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@saxx](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/saxx)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:10am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/4 "2008-07-15T06:10:06Z")
Well theres survays that say if your website doesn’t load in five seconds people become un interested, maybe i was wrong in saying that it is a bit big. I suppose your right :d ---
**Author:** ![REEF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@REEF](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/REEF)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:11am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/5 "2008-07-15T06:11:35Z")
[QUOTE=saxx;2358816]make sure to have a cool preloader[/QUOTE]😑 Will do. ---
**Author:** ![celandine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@celandine](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/celandine)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:16am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/6 "2008-07-15T06:16:43Z")
depends what market you’re aiming at. if the site’s client base is in the US or any part of the civilized world, you can probably get away with that size as bandwidths are getting larger by the day. if you want an international audience, then you will find many parts of the world which still aren’t as well connected as all that, and people will grow beards waiting for your site to load… in serbia for instance tons of people still use 56k modems and dial-up. the serbian web design rule is an acceptably light site is about 200k. but as I say - all depends on your target audience… ---
**Author:** ![ajcates](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/ajcates/32/2435_2.png) [@ajcates](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/ajcates)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:48am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/7 "2008-07-15T06:48:38Z")
Less then 800k is the target area. 500k or less is awesome. 200k is perfect but hard to achieve. anything above 1mb is unacceptable. For content images make sure the jpg’s are progressive. There are different ways of making a flash movie smaller, with some time and effort you can cut almost any flash movies file size in half. Also you can gzip css and javascript files, cut alot of meta data off of png images, make the css so the site would look fine if images aren’t loaded. ---
**Author:** ![nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@nobody](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/nobody)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:59am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/8 "2008-07-15T06:59:29Z")
ajcates - What are you basing that off of? I ask because you have one of the most image heavy sites (for no real purpose) I have seen. ---
**Author:** ![Anogar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Anogar](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Anogar)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 6:59am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/9 "2008-07-15T06:59:33Z")
[QUOTE=ajcates;2358832]Less then 800k is the target area. 500k or less is awesome. 200k is perfect but hard to achieve. anything above 1mb is unacceptable.[/QUOTE] The target size of a site is completely subjective. It’s all about your target audience. There’s a big difference between a site targeting high end MMO gamers, for example, and a site intended to educate senior citizens or something. If you’re making a site for a Japanese audience, 10MB is totally fine. There are absolutely no hard rules, and even for a US market, 1MB is not too big at all if you’re going for an appropriate target audience. ---
**Author:** ![Esherido](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/esherido/32/2158_2.png) [@Esherido](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Esherido)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 12:38pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/10 "2008-07-15T12:38:27Z")
[quote=ajcates;2358832]Less then 800k is the target area. 500k or less is awesome. 200k is perfect but hard to achieve. anything above 1mb is unacceptable. For content images make sure the jpg’s are progressive. There are different ways of making a flash movie smaller, with some time and effort you can cut almost any flash movies file size in half. Also you can gzip css and javascript files, cut alot of meta data off of png images, make the css so the site would look fine if images aren’t loaded.[/quote]nobody is right, your completely going against what you say with your own site. Firebug tells me it’s about 500kb in size, and most of those images load pretty slowly and your site looks like crap with no images. ---
**Author:** ![w1sh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7feea3/32.png) [@w1sh](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/w1sh)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 1:25pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/11 "2008-07-15T13:25:38Z")
Celandine is right. Who are you targeting anyway? ---
**Author:** ![dreeft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@dreeft](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/dreeft)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/12 "2008-07-15T23:20:36Z")
If a good chunk of your files are loaded externally, I don’t see why 1mb is unacceptable. If the user can get to the page and start viewing the initial content while the rest loads, there’s no great loss. Obviously this is not true for a site specifically aimed at a target audience with a finite bandwidth. ---
**Author:** ![Templarian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/templarian/32/7152_2.png) [@Templarian](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Templarian)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2008, 11:28pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/13 "2008-07-15T23:28:06Z")
Yea there are many html sites that are far over that (not to be mean but take darkmotions site it doesn’t actually display content till 466kb, but its 667kb still under 1mb). IMO, 1mb is perfect for the load (dynamic movies/images viewable on the front page only. Sub pages don’t count in the main load size). ---
**Author:** ![sekasi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@sekasi](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/sekasi)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 12:14am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/14 "2008-07-16T00:14:46Z")
Up front load 1Mb is pushing it imo. Total loading 1Mb is fine tho. I wouldn’t recommend up-front loading more than 500k, but that’s just me ---
**Author:** ![REEF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@REEF](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/REEF)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 12:35am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/15 "2008-07-16T00:35:39Z")
Well I have 1 website that I split into 4 swfs (Im using 4 swfobjects) thinking that it might be a little smoother than having 1 large swf? I dont really know how to load movies very well AND keep the code within the loaded movie working (some \_parent or this issue I dont know about). My initial loading is ~850KB (a +1MB huge BG image because I dont know how to do full screen images any other way). Then I have about 10-20 swfs that load (using loadMovie, cause Im nooby) if a user chooses different pages of course. My initial WOULD be 340KB (3 swfs) if I didn’t have one swf thats 510KB because it has a reel of 7 pictures in it. I would try to load these pictures in one by one but then I wouldn’t be able to make an image slide to the next (I dont want it to just disappear and the next appears). But thats because I’m a crappy programmer. Whats weird is that the website runs at 100% speed on one computer, and around 50-60% on the rest of the computers I run them on. Wtf? – On that note, anyone have links for me? I need to learn how to create really dynamic websites. Anything that’ll help me learn and get out of my bad practices. I gotta stop making these complicated websites x\_x. I just cant figure out how 2advanced’s website is more complicated then mine and it loads/runs so much better… ---
**Author:** ![TheCanadian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@TheCanadian](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/TheCanadian)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 12:38am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/16 "2008-07-16T00:38:45Z")
[QUOTE=REEF·;2359360]My initial WOULD be 340KB (3 swfs) if I didn’t have one swf thats 510KB because it has a reel of 7 pictures in it. I would try to load these pictures in one by one but then I wouldn’t be able to make an image slide to the next (I dont want to just disappear and the next appears).[/QUOTE]You should load the images after you load the SWF, that way you can preload each one and it would look a little nicer. ---
**Author:** ![McGuffin](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/mcguffin/32/408_2.png) [@McGuffin](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/McGuffin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/17 "2008-07-16T00:51:46Z")
Depends on the site. I’ve worked on a site that was 20 MB of Flash alone, plus 15 MB of video. Server rape! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![REEF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@REEF](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/REEF)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 1:03am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-big-of-a-website-is-too-big/265977/18 "2008-07-16T01:03:31Z")
[QUOTE=TheCanadian;2359361]You should load the images after you load the SWF, that way you can preload each one and it would look a little nicer.[/QUOTE]Okay lets say the 7 pictures werent 1 big JPEG, and instead they 7 smaller JPEGS. Would I… Create an empty MC. Load all the images into this big MC (each image loading directly next to the previous in terms of \_x). Use onEnterFrame to make the big MC slide left and right when the user wants it to? Or is there a better way to do this?