well coding the importer in something else could have easily taken the same time PHP used to do the importing since I’m a little bit rusty in anything else than PHP. And the import script is/was huge, a lot of logic and what not.

As for JS: the main performance came from combining all the JS files into one so that the browser only makes one request. And using HTTP caching. Minifying was just the cherry on top :)

I am shocked that you used PHP to import the images, I think I would have pulled the plug on that import after 1 hour. :)

Sounds like you noticed a performance boost with minifying even small pieces of Javascript, that’s good to know.