9 Ways to Make Your Website Faster

We checked in previous page, "Measure it, in seconds" how to detect overall health of your website and measure the loading speed. Now we look how to make it faster.

The speed of website depends on many different factors and changing any of them makes site just little bit faster. Usually, fast website uses many techniques to optimise different elements. For getting perfect score, you need to pay attention to all of them. 

1. Number of stylesheets and javascripts

Typical mistake is to have many scripts and stylesheets in one page. We have seen sites, which have 7-8 stylesheets and 10 javascript files. Typical Wordpress installation is notorious by having bunch of files, which are there "just in case" and half of them are actually not used. 

Check carefully what scripts and styles are actually used in page. Leave out these, which are not used. Ideally, you should have 1 stylesheet and 1 javascript file.

2. Optimise background graphics

Large graphic files increase download time and the number of files plays role too. It is extremely important to use proper graphic format, which is most reasonable for particular purpose. For example, using JPG format with optimal compression may reduce file size up to 8-10 times compared to PNG.

The number of graphic files may be reduced by combining various graphic elements, buttons and icons to sprite file and use it with modern css spriting technique.

3. Compress files for lighter size

Packing your html code, javascripts, stylesheets and other files with mod_gzip in server side, will reduce file sizes as much as 80% or even more. Smaller file size means faster loading. All modern browsers are able to read and unpack gzip format, so there is big winning in load times when packing.

4. Use caching in browser side

Most of the background graphics, stylesheets and scripts are used sitewide. There is no need to load them again for each subpage and wait for loading every time. Configure cache settings in most optimal way, so files are loaded only when they are changed or when needed.

5. Optimise server side scripts

Forming of website in server side may be one of the most time consuming processes. Modern content management systems have many server side scripts, plugins and countless database tables, which all slow websites down. There is huge difference is your website using just 3 scripts or needs to gather code from 30 different places. Same applies to database connections and database queries.

6. Reduce database structures and use less queries

Widely used content management packages, like Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla are notorious about having too heavy database structures, with many queries for each time user asks page from web server. We have seen Wordpress pages, which hang for 7-8 seconds before anything comes out from server. That is why we are dedicated to developing more optimised solutions, which stand out by durability and speed.  

7. Adjust file loading sequence

Typical mistake is to load page on cascading style, where one file is loaded and then it triggers loading of next file and so on. The bandwidth has less limiting factor than decade ago, so loading all files parallely helps to reduce bottom line tremendously. At same time, most of the browser side scripts are not used for page forming, then loading them asynchroneously after page is formed is suggested.

8. Cache pages in the server side

It makes huge difference, whether your website generates all pages dynamically each time visitor requests them or saves output to cache and reads pages from static files. Server side caching reduces dramatically page generation time. For example, we developed solution, which generates pages just with 1 millisecond (it is 1/1000 of second).  Roughly, it is the time of reading and outputting static html file. As you anticipate, this solution doesn't open any database connections and doesn't read anything from database.

9. Rent a decent server

Well optimised website doesn't run well in crappy server. We are been developing websites about 14 years and we saw huge differences in server speeds. There are cheap solutions, which work so-so and there are web hosting providers, which offer modern caching technologies, faster solid state drives and well maintained server software, which makes real difference in speed. Surprisingly, technically good web hosts are not so expensive as you might think. See brief list of UK hosts, which we are been using in latest years.

10. Choose platform, which performs better for you

There is still one big decision you make at the very beginning - which web platform to use. Wordpress and Joomla are free and easy to install, that is why everyone is using them. At other hand, they are big monstrums, which consume hungrily server resources and are notoriously slow. You can't have above average website if you are using same slow software as everyone else.

Conclusion

There are many other aspects while optimising websites for speed. Tuning website is not one-time adventure, but it takes time and dedication in small, incremental steps. We are been optimising websites performance for many years and we think we developed pretty durable solution for goal oriented websites.

If you are interested in developing well performing website, which runs fast and gets good results in search engines, then we might have something for you. Please take few minutes and write us what kind of website you have in your mind.