5 Ways to Speed up Drupal Page Load Time

| | 3 min read

Page load time is one of the most critical aspects of your website, and with Google giving higher rank to websites with faster load times, it gets all the more precedence. Optimizing these core areas can lead to considerable improvements in website performance.

Focus on Core Modules for Achieving Fast Page Loads

By disabling and uninstalling the modules you do not need, you can save considerably on page load times:

  • Unload modules which demand multiple trips to the database for each page load, like the statistics module, and the PHP filter
  • To reduce further server load and speed up page load times, disable the update manager
  • Finally, limit modules to bare minimum to ensure faster page loads

 

 

Optimally Prepare Images for Presentation

Images account for a significant portion of your website content, and fine tuning simple aspects of images can create a huge impact on page load times:

  • Compress images through Drupal Image compression or any of the compression tools including the JPEG Compressor or PNG Optimizer
  • Image resizing is an absolute necessity and the Image Resize Filter is an effective tool to achieve the right image size
  • Further, enabling your server with the Image API Optimise will strip images with unnecessary data without compromising on image quality

Execute Vital Caching Strategies

Caching is a comprehensive mechanism to store pages at locations that will help your Drupal website serve pages considerably faster:

  • Core caching renders the entire page in the cache table so that a single query page load takes place
  • Core block caching can cache blocks even if pages are not being cached, accounting for page performance improvement
  • Views caching can be enabled to access views table in the interim, and for real-time data, the view content caching option can be enabled
  • Allowing Panels caching is another important strategy for faster page load times
  • More advanced caching techniques like the Entity Cache gives you the ability to cache anything from simple content to more complex aspects like users and taxonomy and reduce database round trips

Present Less Bulky HTML, Styles, and Scripts

  • By enabling Boost, your HTML files are converted into flat files, one of the most effective mechanisms to achieve fast page loads
  • Delivering faster 404 responses through the appropriate mechanisms will prevent any possibility of the user disengagement
  • Maintain JS and CSS files in their aggregated state, to minimize HTTP requests

Ensure Backend Optimization for High Page Ranking

  • Setting up Cron to run on the server is the best strategy to allow users fast page accession by enabling the process in the background
  • Optimizing Apache and SQL server to adhere to Google and Yahoo page ranking algorithms will be instrumental to your conversions

Zyxware is equipped with the right expertise and experience to help you find the exact way to optimize your pages by analyzing every single aspect in page load times. We help businesses achieve unrivaled success in their target segment. To learn more about how you can partner with is, get in touch with us!

References

[1].https://www.drupal.org/docs/7/managing-site-performance-and-scalability/optimizing-drupal-to-load-faster-server-mysql

[2].https://www.drupalaid.com/blog/drupal-speed-little-things-you-can-do-reduce-your-load-time