In April 2010 Google blareed, that speed of a web site will be considered as an aspect of web search ranking. This means that web site instituter and webmasters lack to optimize their websites. What is the most good way to do that? What if web developers are out of reach? What if recasting the code is not an option? We can proffer several unvarnished and splitting solutions for improving your web site performance using Helicon Ape. To constitute with you need to download Helicon Ape and install it on your Windows server. Native Helicon Ape Manager has you to alter your web server setting using
ExpiresByType text/css "access 5 days"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 5 days"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 5 days"
In case theres no such directory for static content and files are spread across folders of web site, than if you create following .htacces in the root of the site it will cache all static content on the web site by file extension:
ExpiresActive On
Header set Cache-Control public
ExpiresByType image/.+ "access 15 days"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 5 days"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access 5 days"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 5 days"
This configuration makes server send http-responses to clients with information that pictures are to be cached for 15 days and scripts and css-files for 5 days.
2. Compress responses on the run
In form to save some time on loading the content, you can compact it. All hot browsers are accessible to receive comressed gzip-traffic. Text files (html-files, css-files, scripts, json-data) can be easily compressed and allow you to save 20-90% of traffic. Same time, music and video files can hardly be compressed as they have already be sized with special codecs. Heres an example of enabling gzip-compression. Add the following line in .htaccess in the root of web site:
SetEnvIf (mime text/.*) or (mime application/x-javascript) gzip=9
As you can see, this configuration is quite simple. Its enough to have all text documents (html, css files) and javascript-files compressed before going to the clients side. It is worth saying, that server compresses responses only for those browsers, that support compressing. Browser informs server about its features through the headers of html-request.
3. Cache dynamic responses at server side
Constantly grand measure of requests, directed to database server, prevent the web site execution. For example, blogs primary page shows modern entries, modern comments, navigation menu, category list and tags. Those are several complicated requests to database. Sample that information does not substitute often or the relevance is not daily, html-responses need to be cached without hesitation. You can decide to cache the blogs main page once in 5-10 minutes. But that would be enough to better main page performance in browser. Nearly, application developer must determine what pages need to be cached and for how long. Also he needs to bring into life caching mechanism out of the box . Unfortunatelly, that doesnt happen most of the time. Likely, mod_cache in Helicon Ape will simply and easily allow you to authorize caching at server side. mod_cache countenances two types of cache: disk cache and memory cache. First type saves caches data on the drive, and the second one does on memory. Memory caching is more preferable. If your server doesnt have enough RAM, use disk cache. For example, to cache sites homepage, we need to add the following lines in .htaccess in the root:
Header set Cache-Control public,max-age=600
SetEnvIf request_uri ^/$ cache-enable=mem
This configuration enforces caching of sites homepage request for 10 min (600sec). Response are cached in memory. Be careful! You need to enable caching carefully. For example, pages that need authentificaton mustnt be cached as they comprise private data and need to provide uncommon information for unusual users. In any cases, caching must be taking application logic into account. Weve reviewed three simple steps for increasing the speed of your web site. Besides tangible speed-boost, which you will notice at once, the acceleration must well enhance your rating in search engine results. You can see fulfillment graph of www.helicontech.com made using Google Webmaster tools after a simple optimization. So equip your site with these tricks and possess dual benefit!
