Slow website

Question

I just published my website using my .mac account. It was created in iWeb, after having many people view and critique it, the main comment I am getting is how slow it is loading. Does anyone have any input? The site is
www.garonephotography.com (I have a forwarder setup so it goes directly to my .mac page)
I'd love some feedback so i can fix this problem ASAP.
Thanks

Answer 1

It's not particularly slow, though I can see where you might want some improved loading times. The meat of your webpages is in the images. And each image on your page seems to be in the 200-400kb range, which can take a couple seconds longer than anything else on your page to load. I also notice that you like to use the reflection effect on your images. This is fine, but it generally causes iWeb to convert your jpgs into slightly larger PNGs.
Are you resizing your images at all inside iWeb? I mean, once you get your images into iWeb, do you use them at their native size? To see what this would be like, select one of your images in iWeb and then open the Inspector to the Metrics tab. Click on "Use original size" and see what the real size of your image is. If you were to use your jpgs at their original size and not apply any other effects to them, then iWeb would not convert them to the larger PNGs. This means that you will have to process your images BEFORE bringing them into iWeb.
The reflection effect seems to be an exception to the rule... if you use your jpgs at their original size, then apply the reflection... iWeb will generate a separate image for the reflection instead of converting the entire graphic, which saves on file size. But any other effect like adding a frame or drop shadow will cause your jpgs to be converted to PNGs...and the result is usually a bigger file size.