My website, www.wildbackpacker.com, tends to load a bit slowly (it seems like). There are several things I wish would load differently or faster.

Looking at a sample page such as http://wildbackpacker.com/survival/tips/tipsindex.html, you see that my footer loads first, and stays at the top of the screen until the rest of the page loads. How could I fix this? I believe I just have to attach the footer image to the footer div, but I can't figure out how specifically to get it to work.

Kind of along with the footer image, the white body background doesn't show up until the rest of my page is loaded, so for that split second of loading, the text is on the blue background. How could I fix this issue?

From tests I've done, it seems my website does load slower than it should. Does it have something to do with my ads as they seem to be the thing that is slowing down the loading process? Or is it simply my hosting company? Thanks for the help!

"loading speed" will more often than not depend where you are in the world and what the Internet connections are there.

It renders quickly enough (<3 seconds) for me.

Thanks. I understand that connection speed and location can change load time, but it seems like my ads especially slow things down. Any way this can be changed? Also, does the hosting company have any effect on load time?

does the hosting company have any effect on load time?

Not as much as people imagine!

Unless the server is grossly overloaded (oversold) or desperately underpowered (cheap hosting and some resellers), it will have little effect on the overall "loading speed"

Most people mistake rendering time, which is the time it takes for the browser to display the page for loading speed.
Use webbug to see how long LOADING takes.

AND
You have some unicode "issues" with your source code.

A BOM (Byte Order Mark) for one and things like

</sc
2b1
ript>
<script type="text/javascript"

which is going to cause some rendering problems in some browsers.

Interesting. Well I tried that, and I did solve a handful of problems, but I came across issues with my javascript that I didn't understand how to validate. In lines 28-49, I have a script running for my slideshow. It gives me many problems I need to fix, but if I mess with it won't it result in a nonworking slideshow? Sorry I'm so amateur..

0.325 Initial load time. Are you sure you have any problems here? Your webpage loading in a flash for me! I am located in U.S. with a Cable Modem connection. Personally, I find a website load time acceptable if its under 1.5 seconds.

Oh well great to hear! So is it a rendering speed problem? Or maybe it's not a problem at all - just worry about something too small to matter.

slow loading does not depend on the location. it depends on the hosting company those whom you are getting.Go and check is there any problem in their system.

wildbackpacker, I am in school connected to a Indonesian proxy and your site still loads beautifully. As long as your not going past load time of 2 seconds, I don't think you have anything to worry about

Awesome! Well I won't then! Thanks for the help.