Hi
Site: http:scrollpost.com

I am trying to optimize my site and I am using http://tools.pingdom.com to test.

Why are files in ata's image folder (/atahualpaxxx/images/xxx.png) inaccessible directly - so they can be loaded on a CDN - and how do I change this? BTW this is not 100% consistent - inputbackgr-blue.gif for example is open. All files are 755.

>>One more point: The inaccessible images are the ones that have been turned off for display, but for some reason there is code somewhere trying to retrieve them anyway - BUT this is slowing down the page load times (according to pingdom).

Thanks
Jack

try changing the permissions to '644'
I ran pingdom on a fresh install with no errors showing and that is what the permissions are set to for 'rss-gray.png' for example

Thanks. But nothing changed.

Maybe this is a bug? Whether it is 644 for 755 pr 775 shouldn't make a difference anyway.
I am using ATA 364. Perhaps there was a bug that was corrected in a later version?

The key issue as I see it is the "bad" image files are those that don't want themselves displayed.
For example, the wordpress comment system is off, replaced by intense debate.
Maybe pingdom is seeing these files as inaccessible?

I suspect that pingdom is looking in the CSS and trying to retrieve any url that is in it, but not knowing their process, that is a guess.

as for the privileges, it could be tied to the privilege of the folder, the parent folder and .htaccess, restrictions set by the host or something else that I'm unaware of.

privileges and access to files have nothing to do with the theme, they are controlled by the server (Apache)

These days a simple WP installation doesn't generate an htaccess file, but a multi-site one does.
I am using multi-site.

I believe this could be the offending htaccess line:
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]

All the privileges are set correctly.

I have written to the host company.

Answer from the host company:

Thank you for contacting us. I have disabled the FilesMatch Apache configuration entry at /etc/httpd/cont/httpd.conf (under scrollpost.com VHOST).

What was it matching? Or not? It wasn't suffix related. Another .png was getting through.

Well well well! This itself shaves off a few seconds on the pingdom score.
And it's not about cacheing, optimizing, encoding or compressing!
Just a simple non-memory related configuration mistake!