CSS Sprites
Now here’s the first way to speed up your website: CSS sprites
This method is used by almost every major website, as I have discovered today. Make a search on Google, on the top logo is actually only PART of the actual image. This is what is loaded when you see the logo:
Yes, this is true, if you don’t believe me, right click on the logo after making a search and click “view image” (or similar depending on your browser).
How does this help my website?
Say if you’ve got a website which brings in well over 100,000 daily visitors, and on each page load you’ve got to load 20 individual images. This can become extremely taxing to a server if it’s got to do this serveral times for each visitor. With a CSS sprite you are only loading one image, even if its used 20 times on your page.
This post explains it much better. It’s got images and more, I didn’t want to link anything here, but it’s worth your time to check it out.
