The Mexican Immigration Solution: Make U.S. Immigration Policy Match Mexico’s

So you’ve replaced Apache with
Nginx, or put
Varnish
out in front of your main webserver. Or maybe you just spent time converting
all your main site images to
CSS Data URLs. Either way, you’re now ready to taste the fruits of your work via speed
tests. Here are some of the best resources for doing that.

1. Google Page Speed Online | GoogleThis is a brand-new service from Google that replicates it’s Page Speed
   service in online form. It’s focus is not on displaying a visual of the
   response, but rather on giving recommendations on how to improve speed.

2. Site-perf.com | Site PerformanceThis site is very responsive and lets you test from a few different
   servers — two in the U.S. and two overseas.

3. Websiteoptimization.com | Website Optimization This service (and it’s accompanying documentation and guidance around
   optimization) is one of the best at giving recommendations on what to
   fix.

4. Whichloadsfaster.com | Which Site Loads Faster?This site allows you to compare your site against another to see which
   loads faster. It also lets you do multiple tests in a row to get a
   better baseline. Hint: if you load faster than Google’s front page then
   you’re doing well.

5. tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ | Pingdom Load Time TestPingdom’s test service is perhaps the cleanest in terms of
   presentation. I find myself using this one quite often.

6. Browser Load Time Stopwatch | LifeHackerThis is also one of my most-used options for testing speed. It’s
   different than the others because it’s not a web page, but rather a
   piece of JavaScript that runs. You add the link to your bookmarks and
   execute it to test the page you’re currently on.

7. Google Chrome Page Speed | ExtensionThe Page Speed chrome extension is phenomenal for getting results that
   look like a local application in terms of detail and presentation.

8. Google Chrome Developer Tools | Built-in ToolMany don’t realize that Google Chrome has a wicked-powerful set of
   tools built in. By opening the tools from the options menu you not only
   have the classics that let you manipulate JavaScript, see page layout,
   etc., but you also have a network display that lets you see what took
   the longest to load. It’s like a mini Page Speed display without the
   extension.

9. YSlow | Browser ExtensionYSlow is like Google’s Page Speed, only not quite as advanced and
   available for more platforms. It’s now available for Chrome as
   well. Unsupervised Learning — Security, Tech, and AI in 10
   minutes… Get a weekly breakdown of what’s happening in security and
   tech—and why it matters.        

10. webpagetest.org | Web Page TestThis is another very solid web-based test that gives extremely detailed
    output with regard to what the request looked like from the browser.

11. Google Analytics | GoogleIt’s now possible to track load speed through Google Analytics. Simply
    get the latest version of the tracking script that has the functionality
    in it, and you’ll see it as an option within your metrics.

12. Google’s Webmaster ToolsGoogle’s Webmaster Tools has a Page Speed menu under Labs that shows
    you how fast your various pages have been loading. The options is very
    beta, however, as it gives you no control over what to test and not much
    information on what has been tested.

13. Pingdom’s Web Monitoring ServiceThis offering doesn’t test on demand like the others, but rather is an
    ongoing service that continuously tests pages that you define to let you
    know how their responsiveness changes over time. It’s very helpful for
    noticing how various techniques, like CloudFlare or Varnish, improve
    site load times. And since their servers are located all over the world,
    you get to see how fast your site loads from different countries as
    well.

14. Blitz.io. It is a real-deal traffic simulation platform.

If you know of any I should add to this list,
let me know.

[ Jan 17, 2013 — Yes, I know I’m over ten options now…but it’s too late to
change the title. 🙂 ]