| 20 January 2010
Posted in Tips and Tricks

You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While I'm designing a web site , I allways check the speed of the web site.


1. Use minimum images as much as possible - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. If you check the popular web sites on web like Google,Ebay, Amazon etc. , they have very few images. I can suggest you to check your HTML Images and CSS images . Less images is always better for performance

2. Try out CSS Styles - Cleaning up of CSS codes can result in a highly boosted Joomla performance in terms of decreased http requests and total page size.

3. Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.

4. Activate Joomla Cache : Enabling cache will increase the overall performance of your Joomla application.  You can enable caching from your Joomla admin area > Site > Global Configuration > System.  At the right side of the System page, under Cache Settings, next to Cache you should select Yes. Then click Save at the top right menu to enable caching for your Joomla :)

5. Gzip and Compression: Activation of inbuilt Gzip and Cache system does speed up the Joomla site. You can also try some other components and plugins here

6. Minification of CSS / JS files : Optimize CSS / JS files to remove the white spaces or comments (which decreases the size of css / js files by 50%).

7. Joomla Cleaning: Remove unwanted / unused components, modules , plugins. Check for leftover database tables of old components or plugins and drop those tables. Optimize and repair the database tables. Use PhpMyAdmin for this.

An Important Point To Remember: Whatever you try on your website, always remember to back up site first, then backup the file you plan to edit or explore

Where to Check the performance : You can use http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com/ or http://www.joomlaperformance.com/component/option,com_performance/Itemid,52/ to check your web site performance.

When you measure you web site speed on the web sites above you will see parameters below

1. HTTP requests
2. Total size
3. Number of HTML / CSS images
4. Number of CSS / JS (scripts) files.
5. Size of CSS / JS / HTML images.
6. Check for duplicate JS files.
7. Check for NOT FOUND items.

The above parameters will give a idea of what is wrong and what needs to be corrected. One can overlook the “Red Highlights” at the bottom of the result page. As its not possible to meet the stringent limits and most of them will go back to Yellow or Green once you have optimized your site.