"Real World" forum speed tests - suggestions ?

[Digital Doctor]

What would be a fair real world test that would be a useful measure of a website's speed ?

How about this ...

Measure would be count the number of seconds until you could complete this:
(1) go to a forum.
(2) click a thread.
(3) post in the thread
(4) edit the post
(5) save it


Would that be fair ?

Any better tests ? besides things like webpagetest.org ?

I want the test to distinguish a fast site from a slow site.
Should I include search ?

 

[p4guru]

gtmetrix.com and webpagetest.org utilising all test locations available

Speed tests are all relative in nature and depend on distance and network between the targest test forum and the test site location.

Also there's so many other non-forum factors to account for

1. Server linux kernel & tcp level
2. DNS level
3. Server configuration/back end (mysql) level
4. Networking
5. Server processor/hardware level

Such factors could improve page load speed by 20-100% !
Not really scientific, but sometimes i like to take gtmetrix and webpagetest's reported page size and divide by load time (seconds) to get an idea of throughput in KB per second to differentiate between different sized pages i.e. 300KB sized page taking 2.5 seconds to load = 300/2.5 = 120KB/s vs 900KB sized page taking 4.5 seconds to load = 900/4.5 = 200KB/s

 

[Slavik]

Thing is, numbers are great, but it comes down to how fast does it "feel" for the end user.

If it "feels" fast (even if items take a while to load in the background) your users will be happier.

 

[p4guru]

Thing is, numbers are great, but it comes down to how fast does it "feel" for the end user.

If it "feels" fast (even if items take a while to load in the background) your users will be happier.

that goes back to what i said before speed test or even end user perceived speed is all relative.. in this case it depends on the end user's location relative to the test target forum and well as networking/internet speed

European end user will always perceive more page load lag on a US hosted forum compared to a forum hosted in Europe.