WebPageTest

Over one year has passed since I started this thread. It may be a good time to update it...

I still visit Webpagetest.org regularly to read and learn. Occasionally I still play with my site to see what could be improved. But there isn't much I can still do short of moving from my current VPS (which is just fine for the site's needs), to a dedicated server (which I cannot afford).

My latest experiment was with removing AdSense. I used to have a single unit of AdSense on about 90% of pages. (Excluded from advertisements were important pages: Home, main landing pages such as reviews, and pages with only little content.)

With AdSense, Google Webmaster Tools used to report pages on my site loaded on average in about 1 sec, 0.9 sec, and occasionally it even dropped down to 0.8 sec. After AdSense was removed, the speed improved. For a couple of days it was sitting at 0.6 sec, and now, the past 4 updates it has sat at 0.5 sec (better than 98% of sites). I doubt it will reach 0.4 sec, but I'll keep my fingers crossed over the next few days.

AdSense is the only income supporting the hobby website (vBulletin-based forum). I may be forced to eventually re-enable it. But for now, I enjoy the speed, and I'll leave it ad-free for as long as my wife tolerates it :-)