Keep the number of domains serving resources to a minimum
When a website or online service hosts a web page’s components across several domains, the browser has to establish an HTTP connection with every single one. Once the HTML page has been retrieved, the browser calls the sources as it traverses the DOM (Document Object Model).
Some resources are essential for the page to work. If they are hosted on another domain which is slow, it may increase the page’s render time. You should therefore, when possible, group all resources on a single domain.
The only exception to this is for static resources (style sheets, images, etc.), which should be hosted on a separate domain to avoid sending one or multiple cookies for each browser GET HTTP request. This reduces response time and unnecessary bandwidth consumption.
Generate CSS sprite sheets
Group small images (e.g. the website’s interface images) in one larger image called a sprite sheet
This process significantly reduces the number of HTTP requests. There are several free online services for generating sprite sheets (Project Fondue’s CSS Sprite Generator, CSSsprites.com and SpriteMe.org).
