IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR WEBSITE

 Every website owner would prefer to think that his or her site is the best but there will be numerous other optimization processes that will enhance the website. There are three different areas that one must focus one’s attention in order to enhance one’s website. They include front end performance, hardware and server side scripting optimization. Keeping aside all the other applications, this article shall focus solely on Front end performance that is one of the easiest ways of enhancing one’s website.

REDUCTION OF THE AMOUNT OF HTTP REQUESTS

If one requires a faster speed, then the first step is to cut down on the amount of contents on the pages that might include Flash, images, stylesheets and scripts. If one gives a careful look at one’s website, one would definitely discover innumerable stuffs that one could remove. Removing unnecessary contents will reduce the amount of HTTP requests, thereby leading to the increment in speed.

CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK—USE IT ALL THE TIME

CDN aids in the deliverance of content to end users. It consists of a number of computers or servers with the help of which one can increase one’s scalability, performance and it also decreases one’s costs. Since this system implies using multiple servers, it entails increase of speed, giving satisfaction to the users. Since majority of the user’s time is spent is page download operations, using multiple users   helps in quickening the procedure.

USE OF EXPIRES HEADER OR A CACHE CONTROL HEADER

One must use either an “Expires” header or a “Cache control”header depending upon the static or dynamic components. With the enrichment of the WebPages, for example with the usage of applications like Flash and Graphics, makes a first time visitor make numerous HTTP requests .With the use of Expires header, one can make the mentioned features cacheable .This results in the redundancy of HTTP requests on the following page views. With the use of cache, browsers as well as proxies can be loaded with a faster speed on the web page.

USAGE OF GZIP THAT CAN HELP INCREASING THE SPEED

There is much that one can do to control the end user’s bandwidth speed but there are certain variables that one can modify in order to increase the response time. Gzip-ing or compression aids in reducing the size of the HTTP files with about 70%.Majority of the traffic on the internet does travel through browsers that claim to support Gzip. There have some complain with bugs in Gzip and older browsers but now they have been discarded without any further complications.

PUTTING STYLESHEETS AT THE TOP OF THE WEB PAGE

In order to overcome two frequently observed problems such as Flash of unstyled content and blank screen page, one can place Stylesheets at the head of the page. Now, putting Stylesheets   makes the page appear to be loading at a quicker pace than it is actually doing This is generally used when one’s page on the site is clogged with excessive content and the visitors have problems viewing it due to slow internet connectivity

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PLACING OF SCRIPTS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

Placement of scripts at the bottom of the page also leads to the avoidance of blank page and delayed downloading problems. Parallel downloads often leads to blocking of the scripts. If it gets difficult to add scripts at the bottom of the page, one must make use of deferred scripts in order to arrive at a solution.

SAVING OF IMAGES IN THE APPROPRIATE FORMAT

Certain sites might be crammed with images, removing which might not be a viable option since those images might be of utmost necessity to the web content. The formats used for these images are JPEG,GIF and PNG. The format that one uses depends on the images. For example, for “realistic”portraiture of images, one uses the JPEG format, and those with solid colours with logos and charts must be in the format of GIF or PNG. The format in which they are saved gives different colours and quality to the images.

 MINIFY JAVA SCRIPT AND IMPROVE LOAD TIME

It is a good thing for the web owner as well as the visitor to improve the load time. One should take way redundant materials from the script, which implies minifying the Java Script. It is to be kept in mind that characters such as new line, tab, and space counts are also regarded as redundant characters and hence should be removed o speed up the response time. Some tools that can be used to implement this application of saving time are YU ICompressor and JSMin.

AVOID REDIRECTS AT ALL COSTS

One of the important facts that must be kept in mind in order to avoid the decrease of speed iS the allowance of redirects. If one inserts a redirect between an user and an HTML document, the process automatically slows down  something that is totally undesirable by the visitors of the site. If one has to insert a direct, then using the standard 3xxHTTP is the preferred technique. This should be done when avoiding a redirect becomes an impossibility and gets to the status of an absolute necessity.

REMOVE DUPLICATE SCRIPTS

There are innumerable  sites that makes use of duplicate scripts. Duplicate scripts leads to the destruction of the website since it leads to unnecessary HTTP requests that are of no vital relevance to the site. This duplicate script is perceived in those using Internet Explorer as their primary browser while surfing the web. Hence, using Mozilla Firefox can be a viable alternative.