When it comes to finding and maintaining loyal site visitors, the research shows that fast sites will always out-perform their slower counterparts. Today’s browsers simply aren’t content to sit around and wait for sites that take too long to load. Even the smallest tweak to your performance can make a huge impact, preventing your customers from abandoning you to seek answers from your competitors instead.
Today “Drupal” is responsible for powering sites around the globe, all the way from government networks to personal blogs. Here, we’ll look at some of the things you can do to make your Drupal install more powerful than ever, and boost experience for your target customer.
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Keep the Modules and Site Updated
No matter which platform you’re using to host your website, you’ll find that one of the most important things you can do to aid performance is keep your site updated. Old, outdated modules and site versions can quickly cause problems on your website, damaging security, and reducing your site’s performance drastically.
For the best results, simply set your Drupal install to update automatically every time a new module is introduced. Taking this approach is a great way to keep your website as fast, and secure as possible in the future.
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Rethink Your Image Styles
The visuals on your website are very important, as they can help to attract and engage your audience. Unfortunately, while images are useful, they’re also very heavy and capable of slowing down your site significantly.
Fortunately, with your Drupal install, you also get access to a feature that allows you to change the size of your chosen image according to different screens. This means that your website becomes more responsive, and faster, regardless of where your customers are coming from.
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Consider Using a CDN
A content delivery network, or a CDN, is a geographical collection of proxy servers that help to make sure your customers always get the fastest possible experience when they come to your website. Rather than requiring content to be sourced from a single central location, a CDN means that information can be sent from the server that’s closest to each individual visitor.
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Switch to a Faster Hosting Provider
Ultimately, no matter what you do with your Drupal install, you’ll find that one of the most important elements in site speed, is the hosting provider you choose. A fast host leads to a fast website, which means that you might need to simply upgrade your hosting solution if you’re not getting the results you want.
Test the performance of your site using an online speed-checking website, then consider whether a different host might be able to give you stronger results.
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Try Caching Your Content
If you’re interested in improving the speed of your website, and you haven’t tried caching yet, then you could be missing out, particularly when you’re using a Drupal install. Drupal is unique compared to other CMS solutions on the market today because it comes with a range of core caching options built into its framework.
All you need to do to access the caching features available is go into the “Configuration” tab, then onto “Development”, and into “Performance”. Enable the cache pages, and turn on cache blocks. You’ll also be able to choose a minimum “lifetime value” for your cache to decide when specific pages should be cleared from the cache.
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Remove Anything You Don’t Need
Sometimes you need to be brutal with your website if you want it to give your customers the best possible experience. Stocking your site full of too many unnecessary plugins and modules can quickly begin to weigh it down, resulting in slower load times, and poor conversions.
Take the time once every six months (or choose your own frequency according to your specific needs), and make sure that you remove any modules that you don’t need, which could be damaging your performance. Ideally, you shouldn’t be running any more than 50 modules at a time, so keep this in mind.
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Aggregate CSS and JS
Finally, aggregating CSS and JavaScript files could help you to boost the front-end performance of your website significantly. Because browsers won’t need to fetch as many files, and HTTP requests are kept relatively low, your customers get a smoother experience.
All you need to do to start aggregation on your Drupal install is go back into the Performance section in the Development tag and click the box that enables aggregation of JavaScript files. You can also compress and aggregate JS files too.
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