Hi,
I'm running a Joomla! website and I'm experiencing some performance issues.
I ran into this problem a while ago and after extensive testing the host figured out it was an issue with the hard-drive combined with a CPU that couldn't cope and to low memory. So they gave me a new server with a new hard-drive, twice the CPU power and twice the memory. It's a VDS in a cluster setup, so it should be able to "run" my website.
My website performed OK then, not great but it's a "big" site, sort off... 6 languages/different front-pages, around 3500 pages. So I figured it was as good as it was going to get back then.
Fast forward a year and my website is slow again. And by slow I mean, if I use host-tracker.com to check the average load times. I get an average load time of around 4 seconds.
I simple test that I did last year, and with which I proved to my host that it was the server and not the website, was to install a "clean" Joomla! with example data and is the same version of Joomla! and test that as I test my main page. Back then the clean Joomla! installation performed just as bad as my main site. This time around however the clean Joomla! installation has an average load time of 1.35 seconds according to host-tracker.com. So that leaves me with figuring out how to solve this for my main site.
What I did so far:
I turned on gzip/mod_deflate so I compress .html .php .css .js
What I could do is reduce the amount of requests, currently the slowest page (the one I tested the most) has 40 requests, most of which are images. Reducing the amount of request should make a difference even though the page itself is "only" 223 KB.
I use something that is called clicktale, which slows down the page a little. I also use Google Analytics, which of course slows down a little as well. And I load in 2 images from an external source by using javascript, this if course slows down a little as well. I'm perfectly aware that I won't get below a 1000ms for a request but getting below 2000ms or around 1500ms should be something that could be achieved.
I tested with:
host-tracker.com
webpagetest.org
Yslow (for Firebug)
Pagespeed (for Firebug)
and with Firebug itself.
Here come the questions:
The thing that strikes me as the most curious if I look at the Firebug -> Net results is that there's an average 1000ms "wait" before anything happens. So the first GET request takes on average a 1000ms. On the clean Joomla! installation this is "only" 500ms. Still seems a bit much to me but I could be wrong. Is this normal?
My host told me NOT to use absolute URL's for images, because that would lead to more requests. This seemed odd to me, but I tested this anyway and it made as far as I could tell, no difference. Should it make a difference if I use relative URL's for images instead of absolute URL's? Should this result into fewer requests AKA faster loading?
To stick with the images... is there a way to set caching for images? I read about setting a "cache" time for all images but can this be done for only certain images? If so, how?
Is there a way to cache a whole page? AKA make a shadow copy and serve that to the visitor instead forcing the server to "build" the entire page every time someone visits my website. So I can renew/update the shadow copy every 5 mins to reduce the load on the server.
Because it's a Joomla! website with a few extras there are 74 tables. Biggest table has 35000+ rows. This isn't that much is it? I emptied 2 tables with the most rows (2 tables which I could empty) and that made no difference to the page speed.
Next to that ,there are a few tables that need to be repaired according to my SQLyog tool. Should this make much difference? I'm not to keen on repairing them, as I do not know what will happen exactly.
I could put the images in a sprite, but how does this effect SEO for the images?
I'm no Unix/Apache wiz. So I was wondering if there are any logs/backup/cache/tmp files or folders that could slow down my server?
Last but certainly not least... Is there a easy way to properly check server load or bottle necks? Last time my host checked with a tool called Munin, but that didn't tell em much. They resulted in asking someone from cPanel to take a look at their server setup and he was the one that figured out that the server simply couldn't cope as it was setup.
Any hint/tip or help is greatly appreciated.
I'm running a Joomla! website and I'm experiencing some performance issues.
I ran into this problem a while ago and after extensive testing the host figured out it was an issue with the hard-drive combined with a CPU that couldn't cope and to low memory. So they gave me a new server with a new hard-drive, twice the CPU power and twice the memory. It's a VDS in a cluster setup, so it should be able to "run" my website.
My website performed OK then, not great but it's a "big" site, sort off... 6 languages/different front-pages, around 3500 pages. So I figured it was as good as it was going to get back then.
Fast forward a year and my website is slow again. And by slow I mean, if I use host-tracker.com to check the average load times. I get an average load time of around 4 seconds.
I simple test that I did last year, and with which I proved to my host that it was the server and not the website, was to install a "clean" Joomla! with example data and is the same version of Joomla! and test that as I test my main page. Back then the clean Joomla! installation performed just as bad as my main site. This time around however the clean Joomla! installation has an average load time of 1.35 seconds according to host-tracker.com. So that leaves me with figuring out how to solve this for my main site.
What I did so far:
I turned on gzip/mod_deflate so I compress .html .php .css .js
What I could do is reduce the amount of requests, currently the slowest page (the one I tested the most) has 40 requests, most of which are images. Reducing the amount of request should make a difference even though the page itself is "only" 223 KB.
I use something that is called clicktale, which slows down the page a little. I also use Google Analytics, which of course slows down a little as well. And I load in 2 images from an external source by using javascript, this if course slows down a little as well. I'm perfectly aware that I won't get below a 1000ms for a request but getting below 2000ms or around 1500ms should be something that could be achieved.
I tested with:
host-tracker.com
webpagetest.org
Yslow (for Firebug)
Pagespeed (for Firebug)
and with Firebug itself.
Here come the questions:
The thing that strikes me as the most curious if I look at the Firebug -> Net results is that there's an average 1000ms "wait" before anything happens. So the first GET request takes on average a 1000ms. On the clean Joomla! installation this is "only" 500ms. Still seems a bit much to me but I could be wrong. Is this normal?
My host told me NOT to use absolute URL's for images, because that would lead to more requests. This seemed odd to me, but I tested this anyway and it made as far as I could tell, no difference. Should it make a difference if I use relative URL's for images instead of absolute URL's? Should this result into fewer requests AKA faster loading?
To stick with the images... is there a way to set caching for images? I read about setting a "cache" time for all images but can this be done for only certain images? If so, how?
Is there a way to cache a whole page? AKA make a shadow copy and serve that to the visitor instead forcing the server to "build" the entire page every time someone visits my website. So I can renew/update the shadow copy every 5 mins to reduce the load on the server.
Because it's a Joomla! website with a few extras there are 74 tables. Biggest table has 35000+ rows. This isn't that much is it? I emptied 2 tables with the most rows (2 tables which I could empty) and that made no difference to the page speed.
Next to that ,there are a few tables that need to be repaired according to my SQLyog tool. Should this make much difference? I'm not to keen on repairing them, as I do not know what will happen exactly.
I could put the images in a sprite, but how does this effect SEO for the images?
I'm no Unix/Apache wiz. So I was wondering if there are any logs/backup/cache/tmp files or folders that could slow down my server?
Last but certainly not least... Is there a easy way to properly check server load or bottle necks? Last time my host checked with a tool called Munin, but that didn't tell em much. They resulted in asking someone from cPanel to take a look at their server setup and he was the one that figured out that the server simply couldn't cope as it was setup.
Any hint/tip or help is greatly appreciated.
