Web Site Optomization

Boost Your PHP Processing Speed

If you are interested in boosting your php processing speed, chances are you've already started using xCache, eAccellerator, or at the very least Zend Optimizer, but today I found a different (and compatible with the others) way to increase processing speed significantly.

Is RSS Auto-discovery Slowing Down Your Site

I've been slowly migrating this site to a point where it performs optimally, and in the process I discovered that RSS Auto-Discovery can slow down web sites significantly - particularly with the default vBulletin RSS output.

Optimizing for The First Visit

The success of a web site is inherently related to whether or not visitors to that web site come back for more. Whether or not those visitors return is directly related to whether or not they enjoy the experience the first time they come to the web site. One of the primary factors in determining whether they have a positive experience the first time is how long it takes a given page to load.

Minimizing vBulletin Page Load

I've been working to minimize my page load in vBulletin and I'm almost there. The load time differences I've been able to make have been reduced from 82 seconds to under 12 seconds on a dialup modem. Consecutive page views should occur in under 1 second!

Three Tips for Reducing Page Load Times

Here are a three quick and easy tips for optimizing your page load times. These tips, which you can accomplish in less than a few minutes can improve your visitor's experience, open your site up to dial-up users who might currently be avoiding your site, and reduce your server loads. It's hard to justify not doing it.

Cache Strategies for High Performance Web Serving

A discussion of various edge caching strategies that can be implemented for increased experience levels spread out in large geographic regions. Certainly it is effective for use within the US, but sites with multi-continental end user bases would of course make much better use of the technology.

Running a Site on a Ram Disk

Running a web site on a RAM Disk would effectively mean that access times for random files would be exponentially increased for larger sites. At least that's what you would think. A server with considerable RAM, it turns out, is largely effective at caching it's own files. At least in a linux environment.

High Traffic Transaction Support

How many transactions per second should your web server be able to achieve in a high volume environment? This question is of large concern especially in areas with heavily scripted functionality - such as message boards or Wikis. I attempted to answer this question by load testing my own site and by analyzing some slashdotting reports that I googled for.

Pipelining and Task Management

Considering pipelining techniques when publishing your web site is one of the most effective end user experience differences that you can make. While dial-up users probably won't see the same benefits as broadband users, your broadband users can see significant performance increases - especially first time visitors.

Apache Worker MPM with PHP

Apache has two MPM modules that are in broad use - the Worker MPM and the Pre-fork MPM. PHP.net recommends that you use the Pre-fork MPM, while most site optimization experts would push you to utilize the threaded Worker MPM. Surprisingly, load testing showed a relatively small performance difference - and certainly not one that would push you towards a non-recommended implementation on your server.

Prototype and Scriptaculous Compressed

A new release of my compressed versions of the scriptaculous and prototype libraries, along with the techniques that I utilized so that you can accomplish it on your own should that be your desire.

RFC 2616 and Web Performance

RFC 2616 describes the HTTP 1.1 protocol. Within the protocol specification are a few nuggets that webmasters concerned with site optimization techniques should know about.

Compressing Javascript

Two utilities that I have found to make the most effective compression factors, combined with the best broad applicability.

How Fast is 56K

In terms of site analysis, it is important to put a realistic number to work with to understand how your web site will perform when a dial up user is checking it out. Dial-up users still account for a significant amount of internet users in the US - much larger than you would think. This article puts a number out there, and explains the reasoning behind it.

Too Much PHP

PHP is a handy scripting language, but the performance of PHP scripted pages as opposed to static HTML is exponentially different. An article advising a more moderate PHP strategy for webmasters.

Javascript Browser Detection

An article talking about a very complete browser detection library that I ran into while web surfing. It's very easy to use and can be handily included in one of your existing javascript files or as a separate library.

Yet Another Article about Tag Soup

Sometimes you just can't get away from implementing large and nasty groupings of nested objects doing web design, but the ramifications of such are large and frequently result in very little benefit to the overall aesthetics of a given web site.

Compacting Prototype.js and Scriptaculous

While compression techniques can be very effective, some of the frequently used libraries have proven difficult to compress. A guide for accomplishing smaller file sizes with two major javascript libraries.

Compressing and Combining Javascript for Performance

Using compression techniques and combining files where javascript is concerned can make a pretty large difference in the perceived performance of any given website. A few basic steps for implementing these techniques and the levels of enhancement that you can realize by taking advantage of them.