Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems for websites, but like any system, as sites get more complex they can become less responsive. So here are some tips to keep your Drupal site performing well.
1 Stay up to date
A slow website can lose your business money https://betanews.com/2017/11/20/slow-websites-lose-sales/, so it’s vital to address any problems. Drupal sites are made up of modules performing different functions and these can become sluggish over time so you need to keep them updated.
2 Stand and deliver
Using a content delivery network ensures content loads form a location near the user rather than a central point, speeding things up.
3 Modern image
Images can be slow to load. A Drupal design agency such as www.website-express.co.uk will be able to advise you on optimising them to make them faster.
4 Be lazy
‘Lazy loading’ your images ensures they only load when they need to appear on the user’s screen, speeding up overall load times. There are a number of modules that will do this for you.
5 Trim the fat
The more modules you have the slower the site will be, so look carefully at what you need and cut any unnecessary modules.
6 Check your host
Slow load times may not be down to your site but to where it’s hosted. If your current hosting company is delivering sub-par performance consider ditching them for a different one.
7 Check for errors
One of the most frustrating things about using a website is when a link leads to a 404 error page. There are modules that will look for broken links but you can improve your site’s performance by using an online service instead.
8 Cache in
Caching options are integrated into Drupal’s core framework. Some people don’t know it’s there or fail to make use of it, yet turning on caching is one of the easiest ways of boosting your site’s performance.
9 Aggregate scripts
Most sites use CSS and JavaScript as part of their design. Drupal gives you the ability to aggregate these scripts so that browsers don’t need to load as many files, cutting down in turn on HTML requests.
10 Disable logging
Disabling database logging via the syslog-ng module is another way to boost your Drupal site’s day-to-day performance.