Measure site performance before/after optimizations

[dmsnell]

Seeing how I'm starting to work through some site optimizations, I would like to know how much of a difference is made after implementing the changes. Therefore, I would like to take snapshots of several metrics before deploying the first set of changes and also after the final ones.

Which metrics?

• [x] webpagetest.org before
• [ ] Google PageSpeed insights before
• [ ] webpagetest.org after
• [ ] Google PageSpeed insights after

[dmsnell]

This is the webpagetest.org results file before the milestone. I wasn't sure whether or not to pollute the project namespace by including this in some performance directory or what not, so I just created it as a personal gist for now. The output is JSON and contains all of the results.

https://gist.github.com/dmsnell/f11c9108874adf68a50c

[meiqimichelle]

@dmsnell How about putting performance info in an orphan branch called performance and indicating that's where this info lives in the main branch README? I've had success with this approach for UX research where the orphan branch becomes basically a directory structure for holding important metric info that's easily findable without adding to the actual site codebase.

Thank you either way for measuring site performance!

[dmsnell]

Interesting concept...I like it!

[meiqimichelle]

(Also, I'm happy to set up what I suggested :) -- just let me know if that's an approach you like)