NetMechanic's New FREE Service "Load Time Check" Helps Web Pages Load Fast

Huntsville, AL -- (November 3, 1998) - NetMechanic (www.netmechanic.com), a leading web site maintenance provider, has just announced the launch of a new FREE service that will prevent web sites from losing visitors due to slow loading web pages. NetMechanic Load Time Check will search the pages of a web site to find html, images, multimedia plug-ins, and other objects with extremely long load times and alert the webmaster with a full report including advice on how to remedy problem areas. Unlike other fee based services, NetMechanic Load Time Check also offers free advice on how to improve the rendering time, that is, the time it takes for the browser to display the finished web page.

"This is an exceptional service that we're offering at no charge," said Tom Dahm, Manager of NetMechanic. "Thousands of dollars are spent on cutting-edge graphic design, multimedia plug-ins and other creative design techniques. It is all a complete waste of money if visitors have to wait more than several seconds for pages to load, because they won't. They'll move on to your competitor's site."

The NetMechanic "robot" is sent out to fetch the web page, look at the size of the page, and then fetch all objects within the page. The robot will then go through all of the code and look for html problems that may cause delays when the page is drawn by the browser. This process can be done on a single page or an entire site. Once the check is complete, a full report is sent via email in a matter of minutes, with a summary on how every page in the site performed. Users can then click on a specific page to find a detailed report of how long it took for the page to load at different Internet connections. It will also display the size of every object on the page, pointing out objects that are too big and offering recommendations on how to make them smaller.

"NetMechanic Load Time Check is an expert system that counsels users on how to improve the web page download speed," said Dahm. "Rendering time is something that web masters commonly overlook when considering their sites download time."

NetMechanic Load Time Check advises users on very simple and smart techniques that will make a dramatic impact on the time it takes for the browser to draw the page. For example, putting a height and width attribute with all of the image tags will decrease download time. If the browser knows how big the image is going to be, it will save space in the page for that image even before the whole image is downloaded. Load Time Check is the only tool that spots missing height and width tags in images and tables. Other similar services do not check tables.

More about NetMechanic…

NetMechanic (http://www.netmechanic.com) is a web site maintenance service providing low cost site testing and monitoring. NetMechanic has tested over 5,000,000 Web pages, and currently tests over 600,000 pages a month.

NetMechanic's online services are targeted toward webmasters who outsource their site hosting to an Internet Service Provider or Internet Presence Provider. Since these users do not have control of the computer hosting their site, existing desktop or server-based maintenance applications, they cannot adequately address their needs. NetMechanic works by monitoring and testing sites from remote web servers operated by their own service, allowing easy setup with no software downloads.

NetMechanic provides link testing, HTML validation, graphics optimization, and server monitoring services including: Load Time Check, Server Check, Link Check, HTML Check, and GIFBot. These services are free and will test sites of up to 200 pages. NetMechanic also offers a subscription service, Server Check Pro, that monitors web servers 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

NetMechanic is a member of the recently formed Web Host Guild (www.whg.org), an organization developed to set standards for the web host industry and protect consumers from shoddy business practices. Founding members of the Web Host Guild include: Concentric Network, Hiway Technologies, NetMechanic, Sage Network, Sumo, Inc., Web2010, and Worldwide Internet.

NetMechanic was developed by Monte Sano Software, LLC, an Internet software development firm based in Huntsville, Alabama. For more information contact Cindy O'Gorman at (256) 533-0076 ext. 116, pr@netmechanic.com, or visit the company's Web site at http://www.netmechanic.com.

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