DISCLAIMER: These tests were undertaken in a spirit of slapdash curiosity and are not scientific. Speed test websites were chosen by grabbing whatever looked interesting from a Google search. If this subject is of vital importance to you, run your own tests.
For background please read the two previous posts.
Joomla! Version: 1.5.24
WordPress Version: 3.3.1
Before beginning, I logged out of WordPress admin on the Wp site as it seems to affect what’s loaded with the page. I also logged out of Joomla! admin and cleared the Chrome cache.
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First test: websiteoptimization.com.
The results page provides a load of data but I am only going to look at one figure – the T1 download time. Here goes.
T1 1.44Mbps – 9.11 seconds
Joomla site
T1 1.44mBPS – 12.15 seconds.
Ooooh.
Interesting. I’m going for lunch. Then I’ll run a few more tests from Chrome, and some from FF (though that shouldn’t make any difference).
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www.iwebtool.com via Chrome:
Joomla! – load time – 1.34 seconds – avg s/KB: 0.25
WordPress – load time – 0.71 seconds – avg s/KB: 0.11
This again suggests that WordPress is faster – almost twice as fast. I ran the test here another nine times. On only one occasion was Joomla! faster than WordPress.
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Running from Firefox (fyi, yeah I know it should make no difference).
http://www.webpagetest.org/
I love this site. Never been here before. It allows you to choose your test location. I chose Dublin. And choose your browser- I went with IE8.
Joomla!
- First View – 5.202s
- Repeat View – 1.916s
WordPress
- First View – 5.525s
- Repeat View – 2.403s
Interesting! Big change from previous results. WordPress is slower by both measures. Why? Could it be the choice of IE8 as browser? I ran it again, choosing Chrome:
Joomla!
- First View – 4.573s
- Repeat View – 1.588s
WordPress
- First View – 4.177s
- Repeat View – 1.627s
And again, choosing Firefox:
Joomla!
- First View – 5.761s
- Repeat View – 1.454s
WordPress
- First View – 5.727s
- Repeat View – 2.407s
I think the reason Joomla! does better in these tests is because they measure time until the page is initially displayed, rather than total load time. But that is a pure guess.
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Final site: Google PageSpeed Insights
Joomla!
Marks out of 100: 53
It makes several suggestions – the high priority ones are to enable compression and leverage browser caching.
WordPress
Marks out of 100: 61
It suggests I enable compression and leverage browser caching, but this time caching is given only medium priority.
Well, that was fun.
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