101 Ways to speed up your Joomla site

13. If you can't afford a dedicated server, at least get your site off of GoDaddy/1to1/other awful server! Get it on a webhost that specializes in Joomla, like Rochen.

14. Minimize Javascript use.

15. If you have to use Javascript, put it in its own file and call it only when it's absolutely necessary.


The #1 way to speed up your Joomla site, though, is to get it on a decent server.

Jen

Absolutely agree Jen

We're probably are getting a little extorted by our current hosting company but they work and work fast.

Plus, when I remember back to our days on several bad hosting companies ...

But, what happens when all the extra js comes "bundled" with modules and components?

I'm sure joomla would be a lot faster if developers would settle for a js framework and stick to the same one everytime.

My 2 cents: #use image sprites.

I agree with all of your suggestions and have the experience this week to confirm that there is a definite speed bounce from going from a shared server to a dedicated one. I recently moved three clients to Rochen and the results were startling. My only beef with dedicated servers is the expense of the storage and bandwidth. Joomla's databases can grow huge for older sites (one site I moved has over 1,000 articles, videos, mp3s, and such). The storage fills up fast.

My other question has to do with your suggestion to install a slim template like Bolt. It is very difficult to convince some clients that these very plain jane templates can compete in marketing with the jazzy EScene, Rocket, Gavick, and Bamboo templates. I agree with you that the slimmer templates are faster, easier to configure and customize, and maintain; but how do you not use the fancy template when your client insists? Any suggestions?

Steve, GreenGeeks should be on the "bad" list because they say they are optimized for Joomla but their servers are configured with Registered Globals On and their support is very poor. It is difficult to find a definitive list of shared server hosts who actually optimize their computers for Apache/PHP/MySQL. I find they begin to throttle back sites and over-book servers, thus causing major time outs. And there is no way to avoid the speed hit when this happens except to move (which I've had to do three times now).

Don't use external images, iframes or similar.

Is there a mod for Joomla that would somehow allow measuring performance? It would be good to be able to compare it "before" and "after", to see which of the changes make the biggest impact...

David, I have a general question about SEO and Joomla, namely all of these suggestions entail taking the functionality of a dynamic site and sort of emasculating it to enhance speed. I can see the deletion of unused extensions as well as the turning off of extraneous options such as print, PDF, and email for all articles as well as using feeds judiciously, but there seems to be a contradiction in "gaming" headings and title tags vs. creation of meaningful content that bothers me.

As a writer, I want my article titles to inform my readers of what the article is about without having to tortuously bend it to fit some algorithm a search engine uses. Yes, the title tag is invisible, but it still should reflect what the article really deals with rather than throwing keywords in (even in a meaningful way). The same with the introductory paragraph -- it should introduce "who, what, where, when, and why" of that specific article and not of the website. Hiding keywords seems to be cheating and especially since most content on a website is written by users and editors and is very difficult to change without going through a bureaucracy.

As a content-oriented web designer and someone deeply committed to usability, this part of SEO really bothers me. And this is compounded by suggestions of hacking Joomla mods to remove extraneous code. I'm not a programmer and every time I try to follow instructions from "Joomla experts" (I've been creating Joomla sites since Mambo days) on changing code, it blows up the website.

Why not enhance speed and enable faster searches by letting Google's algorithm function and not worry about the internal code of extensions. One's client's pick the features and functions they want and sometimes the existing extensions are not particularlly optimized or conducive to speed tweaks without knowing PHP programming.

I just can't see the purpose in bending Joomla and other dynamic web platforms into pretzels to perform. If we're going to destroy the fun parts of Joomla as well as the beauty of a design for speed, I think Google and other Search engines are doing a disservice to users.

David, you are absolutely right. My question comes from dealing with a recent client I had to leave due to creative differences. When a client tells you about SEO and conversions as a requirement but insists on the bells and whistles then clobbers you because as you had warned, the traffic falls deeply when the fancy template is installed, there is no conversation.

So, where is the middle ground between a template like Bolt and a client's wish to compete with fancy sites (or thinks that's what's bringing in customers)? Clients hear lots of things about SEO and site speed and don't really understand the role of the template in Joomla! It is difficult to explain performance without getting technical.

Your graph is certainly dynamic proof that the simpler the layout, the more traffic but I also don't understand why.

I agree 100% with "don't skimp on hosting." In addition to dedicated hosting, look into a configuration where you're using a system like XCache, which will hold the underlying PHP code in memory. Dreamhost's Premium Service offers this at a reasonable rate.

RE: Twitter feeds and JavaScript from external sites

Yes, removing them can speed up your site. However, if you are coding your JavaScript correctly, you can tell it to wait until the page has loaded before attempting to back-fill the page with your content. If you are using a precoded plugin or module to handle it, there's a possibility that the programmer has not coded it in this way.

This is a well timed post. I have been spending the past couple of weeks working to make my sites faster. Yslow and page speed have been helpful to point out some of the easily overlooked elements.

It would be great to quantify how much these recommendations help.
***Good Hosting Huge improvements
***Removing etags small improvment

It would be great to be able to make all changes but that takes time and then upgrades and management become more involved. Time which most people do not have. It would be great to see which modifications give you the biggest bang for your buck.

I also agree the hosting is a major factor and dedicated hosting is better but for many people the price is to high. The trick is to be able to find fast shared hosting. For that I like Rochen and Hostgator. I recently moved two sites from other good hosts to these companies. I am planning a full write up on these moves.

Has anyone looked at the performance gains of unpublishing or uninstalling the unneeded core joomla plugins? I have started a write up of them here http://www.joomlahostingreview...ined.html The article is still a work in progress and I hope to create some suggestions or best practices for Core Joomla Plugins.

Great topic it has given me a few ideas for other blog posts!

Run your site through a optimization checker like websiteoptimization.com and see what is left to do after doing the above.

@eskwire If you can't get decent hosting, other efforts to speed up your site are generally not going to be wroth it. I'm amazed by the people who will spend hours and hundreds of dollars on an SEO strategy, yet opt for $6.95/month hosting. A lot of these same people spend $80/mo for an iPhone or BlackBerry so they can check those all important emails wherever they happen to be.

You don't necessarily have to shell out for a dedicated box; a lot of hosts offer VPS services around the $20-$30/mo range. That will get you away from the bulk of the issues with shared hosting. You can also host multiple domains with a VPS, which can help reduce the costs if that sounds too high.

All of my experiences with shared hosting go something like this:
* You get on, it's good for a while
* Then you get someone on the box with a rogue script
* You call in and ask to get moved to a new server, they won't do it
* Service steadily deteriorates
* You move on to the next shared host and repeat the process

I could go on, but hosting is really something you don't want to skimp on. If you're genuinely on a shoestring budget and need to produce a website, head over to wordpress.com, host it for free and be done with it. Otherwise, any time, money, or effort you throw on shared hosting is a waste.

Interesting topic ! I have been searching for a fast and professional looking template for ages.....

The big template clubs have all introduced speed extensions lately, which combine and compress css and js files. Joomlatwork has also a cache component which does the same. Furthermore there is css js compress and smartoptimizer. So, a lot of options to increase the loading time of your site...but which one to use ??? has anybody here experience with these extensions ???

I am also wondering if it's possible to combine css files yourself by just copying the code of seperate files into a main file...

Any thoughts about this ?

In reply to the comments on a decent hosting, most good hosting companies typically supply all the features and more that hosting companies specializing in CMS websites provide. Bluehost is a great example. The level of security and customer service they provide is outstanding.

@Jason I was on Bluehost for a while and it was good, but I gradually suffered more outages. When I would call and ask for an explanation, they became increasingly vague. No host is going to stay up for 100% of the time, but you should be able to give people at least an idea of what happened when there's an outage.

While I agree that you don't have to get a host that specializes in your CMS of choice, I can't recommend shared hosting for anyone concerned about performance or uptime.