This document summarizes a presentation on optimizing Joomla performance. It describes two parts to the presentation: Part 1 covers basic application-level optimizations for Joomla like keeping Joomla updated, choosing extensions wisely, simplifying templates, and using plugins and .htaccess rules to enable caching and compression. Part 2 discusses server-level optimizations like using a CDN, opcode caching with APC and Memcached, and reverse proxy servers like Nginx and Varnish. It provides configuration examples and presents results of benchmark tests showing improvements from optimizations.

1. JOOMLA! PERFORMANCE
ON STEROIDS
Tenko Nikolov
SiteGround CEO
Marian Marinov
1H CEO

2. DOUBLE SESSION

3. HOW TO MAKE YOUR JOOMLA LOAD
FASTER
Level: Beginner to intermediate
Presented by: Tenko
PART 1

4. SETUP JOOMLA FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE
(OR JOOMLA AND SERVER SIDE CACHING)
Level: Advanced
Presented by: Tenko & Marian
PART 2

5. Ask us
questions
at
anytime!
INTERACTIVE SESSIONS

6. A LITTLE BIT ABOU
T US

7. Tenko’s Bio
 17+ years of IT life
 8 years with SiteGround
 7 years CEO at SiteGround
 Takes care of 80,000+ Joomla!s
 Husband, dad
 Passionate about photography &
geeky toys
 Addicted to cars and everything
fast

8. Marian’s Bio
 Sysadmin since 1996
 CEO and Co-Founder of 1H Ltd. and
mastermind behind 1H Hive
 Computer science teacher at Sofia
University since 2007
 Coordinator of OpenFest (Bulgaria's
biggest FOSS conference) since 2005
 Regular speaker at FOSS conferences
in the Balkan region

9.  Devs/Sysadmins who love to ssh and do everything on
their own – cloud/vps/dedicated server owners
 Large/high traffic Joomla websites owners
 Multiple Joomla websites owners
 Performance Geeks
WHO CARES ABOUT
PERFORMANCE?

10. EVERYONE!
WHO SHOULD CARE?

11.  Site speed affects your Google Rankings!
 Keep readers/customers happy & paying
 Be able to handle more visitors
 Go green and save $$$ from servers
WHY CARE ABOUT
PERFORMANCE

12. Faster Joomla = Optimizations
KEEP
CALM
IT’S NOT
ROCKET
SCIENCE

13. PART 1
Let’s get the basics
done

14.  Keep your Joomla! updated
 Choose extensions wisely
 Deactivate unused extensions, upgrade used
 Simplify your templates as much as possible
GENERAL GUIDELINES

15. Simple Front Page Is Better
 Fancy stuff – only if you really need it
 Remove unnecessary large images
 Use fewer internal/external links – add
sitemap
 Avoid loading content from remote servers

16. APPLICATION LEVEL
OPTIMIZATIONS

17. Enable Compression
 Natively supported by Joomla! – no extensions needed
 Requires mod_gzip/deflate to be enabled on the server
Site
Global
Configuration
Server

18. Enable Joomla! Cache
 Enable the “System – Cache” plugin

19. Enable Joomla! Cache
Site
Global
Configuration
System
Cache
Settings

20. Some .htaccess Magic
 Get the code:
http://goo.gl/ze09B
 How it works:
- Etag – Tells browsers that an image/unit does not need to be
reloaded
- Expires Headers – Set different expiration dates for various file
types
- AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE – minifies the compiled HTML
source code

21. Some .htaccess Magic
 The code:
FileETag MTime Size
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/css application/javascript
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "now plus 1 hour"
ExpiresByType text/css "now plus 1 week“
ExpiresByType application/javascript "now plus 1 week"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "now plus 1 week”

22. More Optimizations: Images, CSS & JS
 Resize images – never upload 2560x1600 pictures
 Smush your images
 Minify and combine CSS and JS files
 Use image sprites

23. Sounds Nice, How Do I Begin?
 Use smush.it
 Photoshop/Fireworks
 Joomla! Extensions

24. Some Highly Rated Extensions
 JCH Optimize – Combines JS and CSS,
Combines images in sprites, Minify and Compress
 Jbetolo – same as above but + CDN support
 JotCache – improves the Joomla! built in Core
Cache
 Cache Cleaner – easily clean the cache from the
Joomla! admin panel

25. JCH Optimize
 Enable the “System – JCH Optimize” plugin

26. JCH Optimize Settings

27. Google mod_pagespeed
 An open-source Apache module - compress,
combine and cache
 Needs to be installed/configured by a System
Administrator
 Available on SiteGround servers

28. Check How’s Your Website Doing
 Google Page Speed Insights -
http://goo.gl/zPkxx
 YSlow - http://goo.gl/qIios
 GTmetrix - http://gtmetrix.com/

29. Some tests – Default Joomla!
No Optimizations Cache/
Compression
.htacce
ss rules
JCH
Page Load
Time
1.61s 1.49s 1.32s 1.02s
Total Page
Size
563KB 162KB 162KB 151KB
Number of
Requests
35 35 35 19
Page
Speed
Grade
F (41%) B (65%)
B
(87%)
A
(91%)
YSlow
Grade
C (70%) B (66%)
B
(86%)
A
(92%)

30. SERVER LEVEL
OPTIMIZATIONS

31. YOUR VISITORS
LOCATION
MATTERS!
USE CDN

32. CDN Features
 CDN will make your website faster
 CDN will help avoid unneeded I/O on your hard
drives
 CDN will appeal to both Google and your visitors

33. Opcode/Object Caching
 FastCGI + APC PHP extension
 Memcached and PHP/MySQL
 eAccelerator

34. Joomla Interaction with Your
Database
 First request goes to
the database server

35. Object Caching
 First request goes to
the database server
 Objects are also
stored in Memcached

36. Object Caching
 All consecutive
requests are
forwarded to the
Memcached server

37. How PHP works
 Scanning
 Lexing
 Parsing
 Compilation
 Opcode
 Execution

38.  Opcode  Execution
PHP Opcode Caching

39. Reverse Proxy Servers

40. Reverse Proxy Servers

41. Reverse Proxy Servers

42. Reverse Proxy Servers

43.  Custom PHP/MySQL
configuration
 Memcached/PHP APC
 Joomla! friendly reverse proxy
setup
Our Own Solution: The SUPERCACHER

44. More tests: Joomla + VirtueMart
No Optimizations
Application Level
Optimizations
Server Level
Optimizations
Page Load Time 5.22s 3.49s 1.09s
Total Page Size 1.89MB 0.67MB 0.67MB
Number of
Requests
76 28 28
Page Speed
Grade
F (41%) B (85%) A (92%)
YSlow Grade C (70%) B (84%) A (94%)

45. Some Key Takes from part 1
Speed optimization is a process – do it
regularly and you will be rewarded.
Always test! Don’t test on a live site, use
staging copy instead! Backup!
Choose a well optimized host

46. TAKE A BREAK
back in 5!

47. PART 2
Let’s get our hands
dirty

48. Cloud, VPS or Dedicated?
Cloud – can be both awfully slow and cheap or super
fast and really expensive, highly scalable
VPS – Usually fast and inexpensive, but you’re
dependent on others on the same box, limited
scalability
Dedicated – usually expensive and fast, not easily
scalable
CHOOSING THE METAL

49. Hardware matters!
 SSD drives for MySQL & Cache
 SSD Capable File System, if dedicated
 RAID for files
 RAM for Caching
 CPUs that support virtualization
 BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!

50. We need to install some software on it:
1. Web Server
2. MySQL
3. PHP with Cache
4. Memcached
5. Static and Reverse Proxy server
NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR
BOX

51. Web server choice
WEB SERVER CHOICE

52. ★ Apache Pros
 Easy to setup and support, hundreds of modules,
free
 Supports Joomla! out of the box
 Can be found on 99% of the webhosts preinstalled
Apache Cons
 Apache does not scale well and is resource heavy
 Apache has limited number of concurrent users
 Apache is generally much slower than NginX in every
aspect
Apache is the obvious choice.. Or is it?

53. Timeout 30
KeepAliveTimeout 10
MaxKeepAliveRequests 30
StartServers 20
MinSpareServers 10
MaxSpareServers 20
✔ Remove all unused apache modules, this reduces
the request processing time.
Apache recommended settings

54. ★ NginX Pros
 Shorter response times compared to apache
 Very high number of concurrent users
 Faster than Apache in serving static content
 Supports FastCGI
NginX Cons
 Not supported by major control panels (cPanel, Plesk)
 Does not support mod_rewrite out of the box –
additional configuration for Joomla!
NginX for performance PHP

55. Joomla SEF URLs on NginX
Add this code to nginx.conf file:
MORE INFO AT: http://is.gd/qCeuqU
# Support Clean (aka Search Engine Friendly)
URLs</tt>
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/
/index.php?q=$request_uri;
}

56. BIND=/tmp/nginx.fcgi.sock
USER=apache
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=20
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
PHP_CGI=/usr/bin/php-cgi
PHP_CGI_NAME=`basename $PHP_CGI`
PHP_CGI_ARGS="- USER=$USER PATH=/usr/bin
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=$PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=$PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQU
ESTS $PHP_CGI -b $BIND"
su - $USER -s /bin/bash -c "/usr/bin/env --
$PHP_CGI_ARGS &"
Setup NginX with FastCGI & PHP

57. 1. Most buffers in MySQL are per connection. They
store pointers, NOT data.
2. Optimize your InnoDB
- separate the data files
- increase innodb_thread_concurrency (not more
then the amount of cores you have)
3. Optimize your query cache.
MYSQL SETUP TIPS

58. Expected MySQL Qcache results
Qcache_hits | 61168 |
Qcache_inserts | 10068 |
Qcache_lowmem_prunes | 0 |
Qcache_not_cached | 3 |
Qcache_queries_in_cache | 922 |

59. LET’S MAKE PHP FLY

60. FastCGI Setup
Enable FastCGI Apache Module FastCGI Wrapper Script
LoadModule fcgid_module
modules/mod_fcgid.so
# Activate the PHP handling
<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
<Files ~ (.php)>
SetHandler fcgid-script
FCGIWrapper
/var/www/users/wrapper/php-fcgi .php
Options +ExecCGI
</Files>
FcgidMaxRequestLen 20000000
</IfModule>
Wrapper script
/var/www/users/wrapper/php-fcgi
#!/bin/sh
export PHPRC=/etc/
export
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=20
exec /usr/bin/php-cgi

61. 1. Install APC:
pecl install apc
2. Load APC extension in PHP:
/usr/local/lib/php.ini - extension=apc.so
Recommendation: Keep the default settings!
Enable APC

62. Enable Memcached
1. Install Memcached (service)
yum install memcached
2. Install PHP Memcached module
pecl install memcache
3. Recommendation: configure Memcached to use Unix
domain socket instead of TCP – improves speed!
/usr/bin/memcached -d -m 64 -c 2049 -P
/var/run/memcached/memcached-11211.pid -s
/tmp/memcache.sock

63. Enable APC/Memcached in Joomla

64. Joomla Patch for Unix Socket Connecti
ons
Edit the following file:
libraries/joomla/cache/storage/memcache.php
Change the code on lines 86-88 from
self::$_db->addServer($server['host'], $server['port'], $this-
>_persistent);
$memcachetest = @self::$_db->connect($server['host'],
$server['port']);
To:
self::$_db->addServer('unix:///tmp/memcache.sock', 0);
$memcachetest = @self::$_db-
>connect('unix:///tmp/memcache.sock', 0);

65.  Move PHP binaries to RAM
 Move TMP to RAM
 Move MySQL to an SSD drive or SSD RAID array
 Enable MySQL query cache
 Use TMPFS for MySQL’s tmpdir
 Install Google PageSpeed for apache
 Enable Gzip compression (mod_deflate on apache
2)
More Apache/MySQL/PHP Tweaks

66. EVEN BETTER
PERFORMANCE?

67.  Also known as Reverse HTTP Proxy
 Install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP
 Blazing fast – usually speeds up 300-1000x
 Performance is usually bound by the speed of
LAN
 Free, Open Source software
Varnish - The ultimate web app acceler
ator

68.  Can be harder to setup and configure than NginX
 You still need Apache (or NginX, varnish does not
know PHP)
 Dramatic performance increase – only when
caching dynamic content
 Caching dynamic content might lead to
unexpected troubles!!! Cache should be properly
invalidated!!!
Varnish Cons

69. Varnish VCL?
 Exclude non-cacheable pages:
• registration form
• administrator
• installation folder
 Set objects expiration time

70. Sample Varnish Joomla VCL
joomla.vcl:
# Bypass Varnish if the request is to the registration form
if (req.url ~ "task=registration.register" || req.url ~ "view=registration") {
return(pipe);
}
# Never cache administrator/installation
if (req.url ~ "/administrator" || req.url ~ "/installation") {
return (pass);
}
return (lookup);
----
sub vcl_recv {
set req.backend = default;
include "joomla.vcl";
if (req.url ~ ".(png|gif|jpg|swf|css|js)([?].*)?$") {
return (lookup);
}

71. How we tested?
 We use Siege - http://www.joedog.org/siege-
home/
 Siege command: siege -b -t 60S -f urls.txt -c 20
 We use 20 number of simultaneous connections
 We use a predefined list of URLs – all URLs from
the default Joomla main page + sample data
 We measure the number of hits taken for 60
seconds
TEST THE OPTIMIZATIONS

72. Test Environment Setup
• Virtual Machine (VPS)
• CPU: 4 cores 2GHz
• MEM: 4GB
• HDD: 8x500GB SATA II 7,200rpm in RAID 10
(on the host)

73. Joomla! Optimizations Test Results
Apache +
fcgi
Apache +
fcgi +
Memcache
d
Apache
+ fcgi +
APC
Apache +
fcgi +
NginX
Apache +
fcgi +
Varnish
Transactio
ns
3,285 hits 4,316 hits 4,629
hits
185,462
hits
178,906 hits
Availability 99.85% 99.83% 99.86 % 100.00% 100.00%
Data
transferred
9.20 MB 12.09 MB 12.97 MB 519.08 MB 500.29 MB
Response
time
0.29 sec 0.18 sec 0.20 sec 0.01 sec 0.01 sec

74. QUESTION
S TIME

75. THANK YOU!
Tenko Nikolov
tenko@siteground.com
@tnikolov
Marian Marinov
mm@1h.com