Hi
Trying to implement JCH Optimize on my site: www.witrazesc.com.pl/witraze/witraze25test/ (Joomla 3.1, Inspire)
After turnig on Js compress:
1. dropdown menu items don't work
2. zentools grid module on front page is not visible

I'd like to know what javascript files are responsible for above?
I'd like to know these files to exclude them from comperesing in JCH settings

Thanks Tomek
p.s. tried Rokbooster also. WIth RB there was similar problem with submenu on default pages (on Home page was OK). The second issue with RB were background images displayed without any sense on Home page (on default pages was OK).

Hi witraze,

If you use Firebug or Chrome Dev Tools then you can see several JS errors in your website, the first one is jquery.flexslider.min.js.

IJCH Optimize has an option to exclude a file, you need to exclude jquery.flexslider.min.js and check again.

Regards,

Hello witraze,

How did this turn out for you?

I have considered doing this since I do need to optimize my site for better speed.

I am curious if anybody else is using this with JoomlaBamboo templates and how it works. It would be nice to have a one step site optimization too.

Anybody else trying this out?

Also, pointers to JoomlaBamboo site optimization suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Sean

Hi Sean
I tried Rokbooster and JCH. With RB results were fantastic (page weight reducet to 300k from 4 MB) but the number of errors made me to resign from this add-on.
In JCH I have all but JavaScript optimization turned on. Turning off JS is a must for me - with JS optmize main modules and submenu items don't work. I think it is possible to fight it but the main issue and most buggy is responsivness. There are so many errors with JS optimize on that I had to turn it off. I am not happy with turning of JS optimize but I am not smart enough to fight all JS bugs

regards Tomek

Hi Tomek,

Did you try Vietvu's suggestion?

Do you have javascript compression also enabled in the template settings? The combination of the two might be causing the problems.

Rob

Rob, I am using Inspire which is a T3 template and did not find where to turn on or off javascript compression. I did find compression for css but could not use it because of a problem I am having with my CloudFront CDN making font-icons and some other JoomlaBamboo objects like the prev and next on carousels stop being visible.

I think will try JCH and see how it works for me. I can see this is not for the faint of heart.

Thanks, Sean

Good luck with it

Let us know how you get on

Cheers
Paul

Well Paul,
Since you asked! Here is my report.
Note: To see this you will have to login to the front end at drcarney.com with a preview user I created:

login: previews
password: CheckItOut

I have been playing with it most of the day and learned more than I ever thought I wanted to. Still have some problems and could probably use some sleuthing like Vietvu did for witraze.

I have played with many different combinations and found my site breaking and being fixed etc... until I found all the settings that kept my site working and gave me as much as I could get without a bit more help. (Although I also had to add some code to my .htaccess file as well that Rob gave me in a ticket which was designed to prevent the CloudFront CDN from not displaying images. Apparently it is a browser by browser thing where the browser does not want to display font-icons and ZenTools navagation icons coming from a different domain.

The code he gave me was as follows:I am attaching four images for you to look at:

With the Basic Options I was able to turn on most of what they want turned on except for the option to Minify javascript and the option to Defer javascript. Both of those options break my site:

If I defer javascript then the MegaMenu breaks and does not display. Also, the top menu I created loses all of it's hyperlinks. And, the ZenTools grid on the homepage soft of falls apart and I end up with extra rows and some of them only displaying one item.

As well there is only one setting I can set for the Position combined javascript field which is "First found javascript tag". If I select the option for 'after last found javascript tag' or for 'at the end of body' the MegaMenu again breaks.

Even though I have successfully got the settings to state they are combining CSS into one fiie and js into one file the report from YSlow states that I fail on "Make fewer HTTP requests" because I have 29 external javascript scripts and 14 external background images.

It also says that I have 8 external background images that I should put in a sprite. But, if I turn on the sprite the black overlay image stops being visible as a background image when I scroll up the page. Interestingly that is the ONLY image on the page that is NOT REPEATING and so the only image that JCE suggests should be in a sprite. I have just left this off for now.

In the advanced settings I have been able to Exclude all extensions without anything breaking so I am happy about that. At least nothing is broken that I am aware of. I am NOT able to turn on the Use htaccess option even though I should be able to because when I do the font-icons in the social media module at the top break (become not visible and show garbage characters) and also the ZenTools Prev and Next icons don't work. Also, the little icon in front of the breadcrumb trail and the RSS icon display garbage characters.

So, that is about it. I hope this is helpful. After going through this exercise I thought that if JoomlaBamboo could figure out how to set up JCE Optimize with all templates and could give instructions it might be a real great service that I suspect is not coming from other template houses. It would be nice if all templates were JCE Optimize friendly.

Google Page Speed give me a better report card than YSlow but also tells me that I need to leverage browser caching. So, I would sure like to know how to turn on the caching. JCH Optimize has the ability to set that to 30 days for the aggregated files but I need to know how to do it for all images, and other objects.
I am very impressed with JCE Optiimize! That said, the YSlow report seems to indicate that the css and js aggregation may not be working properly for me.

Thanks for listening!

Sean

Hi Sean
Here is my update. I have made pretty big success in optimizing my site (J3! & K2, Inspire) - all options of JCH are turned on now on my site and it is working OK.
GTmetrix gives me "B" and "C" grade (was D and E).

The clue is to install JB library and remove Motools completly from the site (there is such an option in JBlibrary). CSS compression in template can be turned on. The funny thing is that switching on the cache in global configuration gives worse results - in my case it should be off.

In settings of JCH I excluded mod_zensocial as the font icons of module were not visible.

The only problem is with font icons in K2 items generated by JCE in K2 items text.
I have to exclude the js script but don't know what is the name of the script responsible for generating the fonticons.



Good luck with optimization your site!

Thank you very much Tomek for the update,
I will be coming back again to refer to this. Regarding the font icons I have a ticket in about this and believe that JoomlaBamboo may solve this problem so that the font icons just work everywhere. So, I will try to remember to post about that when it gets solved.
I am very interested in your comment about installing JB Library and removing MooTools. I did not know that I could use, or should use, JB Library with an Inspire template and Joomla 3.1. I guess I will to try to learn more about that.
I am also not sure how to tell what parts of my site are using MooTools but I guess if I turned it off I would find out.
Thanks, Sean

Tomek,

My font-icons problems were solved by Rob adding to my custom.css file some code to replace the zenkit icons with fontawesome ones instead. Now I have consistent font-icons. I do not know if that helps you but if you are using ZenKit it might.

Here is the code that Rob added to my custom.css that worked for me:

Thanks for the post Sean

Cheers
Paul

Hi Rob
Can you tell if is it a js file which is responsilble for generating font-icons (Inspire ver. 1.4.0). Turning on JCH makes font icons to vanish. I succed to save them in Zen social module by excluding this module in JCH settings. Now I'd like to exclude JCH from K2 categories and items. But don;t know which file (js or css is responsible for fonticons.
regards Tomek

p.s Once more thank you for help in my problem with modules visibilty!

Hi Tomek,

All fonts in the template are controlled by css and font files.

Your zenkit icons are controlled by

/media/zenkit/css/fontello.css
/media/zenkit/css/zenkit.css

The fontello file uses @fontface with relative paths to the font files so if jch is placing the contents of this file in another location the path to the fonts will be broken.

Regards,

Rob

robwent wrote:
It is like you wrote - unfortunatelly. Life is brutal - I will not have fonticons in articles Thank you for this info.
I will try to inform JCH author about it - maybe they can prepare the update.....

regards Tomek

If you exclude that file from jch's combination and compression then it will be loaded from the correct place and should work as normal.

Hurray! It is working now!

My settings of JCH are:

Combine CSS Files
Yes
Replace @import
YES
Combine JavaScript Files
YES
GZip JavaScript and CSS
YES
Minify CSS
NO
Minify javascript
YES
Minify HTML
YES
Defer javascript
YES
Position combined javascript
Bottom of page

Additionally I have to exclude: mod_zensocial plus mootools turned off in JBlibrary


Thank you Rob!

Great!

Thanks for letting us know, I'm sure that will be helpful to others.

Regards,

Rob

Hi
The new version of JCH was issued in December 2013. For 5 bucks you can buy Pro version wiht Support! And the Support is most precious part of the investment.
Support is great and quick! Samuel - author of the JCH configured all for me. He diagnosed what should be excluded from compressing (Zenkit) and put the right sequence of addins (JCH should be nearly last only Google Maps and Cache after).

And most important my site from C is now:
Page Speed Grade: A (92%)
YSlow Grade: B (83%)

Next version of JCH will be probably updated to work with Zenkit.


regards Tomek

p.s. I am not connected to JCH - I am just happy user now!