We know that speed is the most important factors for the success of your website. By default, Joomla isn’t slow but you can do a lot to optimize it and achieve great speed for your site. Here you will find the most essential actions you can take to speed up your Joomla Site.

1. Keep Joomla and its Extensions Updated

Having the latest version of Joomla is important for your site speed because in each version there are multiple code improvements. Even if the changes are small – new Joomla versions are generally performing better than previous ones. For more information on how to update Joomla to the latest version check out our Joomla Update Tutorial.

Keeping your Joomla extensions up-to-date is as important for the speed of your website as the Joomla itself. For more information on how to keep your Joomla 3 components, modules and plugins up-to-date.

2. Enable Gzip Compression

Using the Gzip Compression feature, you can compress your website pages before sending them to the user. After that, they will be uncompressed by the user’s browser. And this process takes less time than transferring uncompressed pages.

By default, Gzip Compression is disabled in Joomla 3.x. Therefore, you have to enable it manually by following these steps:

On the Top Menu, select Site > Global Configuration > Server tab, and switch the Gzip Page Compression to YES option.

3. Enable Cache System

Most websites have contents that are not changed frequently. Therefore, the theory of Joomla caching is very simple: the Cache system takes a copy of the whole page in its first load. When the user visits it again, this copy will be displayed without reloading the same images and files all over again.

Please make sure that you enable Joomla Cache system. This is a very simple step but it can increase the loading speed of your website a lot. You can do it as follows:

Global Configuration > System > Cache setting, and switch Cache to “ON – Conservative caching”. In ‘Cache time’, choose 30 (minutes) for a cache file to be stored before it is refreshed.

4. Optimization Settings (Images, CSS, Java Scripts…)

Here are the optimization that need to be used to speed up your website:

• Images: don’t try to upload big scale pictures, resize them before uploading.
• Template: try to have a lighter and simpler website template. Simple is always the best.
• Reduce the size of CSS files; compress Javascript files; minify and combine CSS and Javascript files to reduce HTTP requests and file size.
• Clean up Joomla often and remove anything that you don’t need: unused components, modules, plugins, “Not Found” queries…

N.B: You can use JCH Optimize for better performance, it’s free and easy to install. Download from here 

5. Template Compression Options

If you are using bdthemes template so you have to do below settings as image. Finally when you going to publish your site, compile less and if check mark into less compile so unchecked compile less and compression to “Minify + Data URIs + Gzip”.

Go Site admin > Extensions > Templates > template_name(Ex: framed)

6. PHP 7 and Boost Speed

The most easily recognizable advantage of the PHP 7.0.x is the significant performance improvement, your Joomla! code will be almost 2x faster compared to PHP 5.6. So check your hosting panel or ask hosting support how to switch to new version of PHP. Make sure all your plugins, modules and components you are using on the live site are compatible with PHP 7.

7. Limit or Remove Social Sharing/Like Buttons

Most social buttons use additional JavaScript and requests, and this can be very troublesome when it comes to performance of the website. It delays the loading of your website content, which in turn makes your search ranking drop. The more social buttons you use, the more calls need to be made, and the slower a page loads. Think twice if you need a long list of social share any maybe keep only two the most popular, or maybe none of them.

8. More Memory

It might be necessary for you to increase the memory limit, a maximum amount of memory a script may consume. If you have access to your PHP.ini file, change the line in PHP.ini
If your line shows 64M try 256M:  memory_limit = 256M ;
If you don’t have access to PHP.ini try adding this to a .htaccess file: php_value memory_limit 256M
If none of the above works then you would need to talk to your host about having them increase your memory limit.

9. Choose the Right Hosting from a Reputable Provider

Whilst there are multiple things that you can do to enhance your site’s performance, such methods have their limitations. Tweaking CMS will only help optimize site performance. Low-quality hosts attract consumers with low prices, but they always fail to mention to the consumers that they have old servers and that they are unbelievably slow. You can only avoid this by researching on a web host that is proven to be trustworthy and very efficient.

10. Finally Check Your Joomla Website Speed

Don’t forget the final step – check your website speed. You should do it before and after following all of these guidelines. And don’t be surprised when you see how much faster your website can be. You can do it by this site: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Thank you very much.