Optimisation For Speed

[Michael]

So, what methods do you use to optimise your website to make them load faster?

I'm currently in the process of starting off a new version of one of my sites, and with it, it's most beneficial if it loads pretty damned quickly - it's what sets it aside from competition.

Anywho, current methods I have are:

- Linking CSS
- Minimising JavaScript [only got jQuery linked atm]
- Image Sprites
- Hosting all Images/JS/CSS on a subdomain (a.site.com).

I'm told there are huge benefits from hosting on a subdomain, something to do with the amount of "multi-site" downloads it can have going at one time.

Anywho, any others you can think of or that?

[Bennett 🚀]

If you have a design you use repeatedly, space it out in .php files, and then just include them.. That usually gives a little boost of speed, because PHP is processed before the page loads.

[Michael]

Jun 21, 2010 12:00:05 GMT -8 Bennett 🚀 said:

If you have a design you use repeatedly, space it out in .php files, and then just include them.. That usually gives a little boost of speed, because PHP is processed before the page loads.

That has nothing to do with the actual download speed of the page... 'cause the page whether it's through PHP includes, or through the full page HTML would be the same size.

[Bennett 🚀]

xD It goes faster for my computer.
;D

[Michael]

And you've becnhmarked it? O.o

[Charles Stover]

Download the YSlow extension for Firebug. /thread

It's the greatest website loading speed optimizer everrr. Totally useful.

[Bob]

Two exceptionally useful things to do to optimize:

1. Cache wherever and whatever you can. If it doesn't change on a frequent basis, cache it. Serving raw HTML is less of a strain than executing PHP.

2. Install an accelerator. They compile and cache your PHP's bytecode so it doesn't have to recompile upon every request. APC and eAccelerator are the two bigger names for accelerators. My personal favorite, and the one I use myself, is eAccelerator. Benchmarks I've read in the past and benchmarks I've done myself all show that it's more efficient than APC by a decent margin.

[Chris]

As for downloading... look into forcing a cache and then using a query parameter to force a reload as necessary (i.e. .js?v3.4 and then .js?v3.5 on update).

GZip compressing files might be worth looking into also. I don't know how unpacking the compression effects it, but for a non-compacted JS file, it provides HUGE cuts in the file size... I've seen up to 90-95%.

[Charles Stover]

GZip is definitely worth looking into. I place all my JS/CSS/image files in a generic folder, then mod_rewrite redirect all the files to a gzip.php file that will compress them before sending. It saves a ton of bandwidth, and the time saved from downloading less is far greater than the time used by decompressing.