HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR
JOOMLA SITE?
Tenko Nikolov
CEO, SiteGround

Before We Begin – Who’s That Guy Tenko?
 17+ Years IT Experience
 8+ Years CEO of SiteGround
 7+ years of Joomla! Experience
 Love travelling the world
 Addicted to fast things &

WHY BOTHER DOING IT?
 Site speed affects your Google
Rankings!
 Keep readers/customers happy &
paying
 Be able to handle more visitors

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

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

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

APPLICATION LEVEL
OPTIMIZATIONS

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

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

Recommended Cache Settings
Site
Global Configuration
System
Cache Settings

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

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”

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

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

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

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

JCH Optimize Settings

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 *

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

Some Results – Default Joomla!
No
Optimizatio
ns
Cache/
Compressi
on
.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%)

SERVER LEVEL
OPTIMIZATIONS

Use CDN
YOUR VISITORS
LOCATION
MATTERS!

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

Software Tweaks
 Use fast and secure PHP like FastCGI
 Move PHP binaries to RAM
 Move TMP to RAM
 Move MySQL to a separate hard drive: RAID &
SSD
 Enable MySQL query cache
 Use TMPFS for MySQL’s tmpdir

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

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

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

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

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

PHP Opcode Caching
 Opcode
 Execution

Reverse Proxy Servers

Reverse Proxy Servers

Reverse Proxy Servers

Reverse Proxy Servers

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

Final Results: Joomla + VirtueMart
No
Optimizatio
ns
Application
Level
Optimizations
Server Level
Optimization
s
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%)

Some Key Takes
 Speed optimization is a process – do it regularly
 Always test!
 Choose a well optimized host

QUESTION
S TIME

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Australia!



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24/7 Aussie toll free
Payments in AUD

JoomlaDay Sydney Exclusive Offer
Get It At:
www.siteground.com/australia

THANK YOU!
Tenko Nikolov
tenko@siteground.com @tnikolov