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What is the best way to improve Drupal's performance?

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I run a Drupal website that is quite slow despite the fact that I don't have to many modules. I have enabled the site's performance settings - normal caching, gzip content, and so on - so I don't think that is the problem.

What are some of the best ways to speed up Drupal so my website gets a higher page rank in Google search and readers can access the information they need quickly?

‹ Which is the best small business Web design software? Mobile website? ›

Drupal's performance can be improved in two ways

In order to speed up webpages, you have to:

  1. reduce bandwidth or transfer size
  2. reduce the page execution time (processing)

1. : In order to reduce the size of your pages, you should consider the following:

  • optimize images
  • remove unnecessary images
  • reduce JavaScript
  • use CSS3 to replace images and JavaScript (where possible)
  • aggregate CSS and JavaScript files
  • gzip everything

You can learn a whole lot more about performance, speed and SEO by reading these articles:

2. To reduce Drupal's processing time you first need to find out what is slowing it down. To do this, you need to install a few benchmark/profiling modules and scripts.

I recommend:

Once you are sure that your site is performing well, it is time to start aggressively improving Drupal and PHP's performance using:

Learn more about PHP and Drupal server performance by reading Website optimization - performance, speed & SEO.

Submitted by David Mercer on 14 November, 2012.
David Mercer's picture
WSM4B

I am a software developer, serial entrepreneur and bestselling author of programming, development, eCommerce and marketing books.

I love solving complex problems and bringing cool solutions to market. I have a cum laude science degree (double major in applied mathematics and mathematics), and 15 years of Web development, programming and online business experience.