optimize Joomla

One of the most important factor in user experience of a website is how fast it loads. Of course loading times depend on many factors like;

  • hosting location
  • template used
  • amount of javascript to load
  • size of the css file

In general one can say, the fancier the website looks the longer the loading times will be.

Does that mean you can't use a fancy website? Of course not. The look and feel of a website almost equally important as the content you provide. 

"Users will come back for the content you provide, not to admire your fancy looking website"

Turn off Etag.

Just add the following code to your .htaccess file:

FileETag None
  • Add an Expires header to your web component.

    To add an expires header to images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, just add the following code to your .htaccess file:

    <IfModule mod_expires.c>
    ExpiresActive On
    ExpiresDefault A600
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon A2592000
    ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A604800
    ExpiresByType text/css A604800
    ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
    ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
    ExpiresByType text/plain A86400
    ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash A2592000
    ExpiresByType video/x-flv A2592000
    ExpiresByType application/pdf A2592000
    ExpiresByType text/html A600
    </IfModule>
    What does it mean? Well basically you tell how long each specified file/content type should be considered valid. So a browser would know "i downloaded it x seconds ago, so no need to reload it now".
    The "A" is used to indicate that x seconds from Access is specified. It is also possible to use "M" which stands for Modification time. The expires by time is specified in seconds. So you need to do a little math if you want to specify minutes or weeks.
    Here are a few of the more common used times:
    • 600 = 10 minutes
    • 3600 = 1 hour
    • 86400 = 1 day
    • 604800 = 1 week
    • 2419200 = 1 month
    • 29030400 = 1 year = never expires

    This need apache has installed mod_expires. Make fewer HTTP requests

    You can use Joomla Plugin: CssJsCompress to aggregate all JavaScript and CSS files into one file, and use inline image combine all CSS images into a single image file.

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