PHP can be used to build a variety of website types, such as forums, blogs, social networking sites, and more. But while PHP allows you to quickly create powerful websites, there are some things you can do to speed up your website even more and make it run faster. If you’re not seeing the performance you want from your PHP website, consider these seven steps to make it faster.
1) Check your hosting
This is something most web developers don’t think about. A common myth amongst website owners is that using a VPS or a cloud platform like Amazon Web Services will improve their site speed. This isn’t always true. Many of these hosting platforms offer SSD storage, but they also give you limited resources to use on them. If your host is running other sites that eat up all of your processing power, you won’t actually notice any speed improvements by moving to a cloud service — in fact, it could make things worse!
Instead, find yourself a low-cost shared server from an established host and optimize it for PHP 7 instead of choosing based solely on cost. Remember: cheap isn’t always better when it comes to hosting!
2) Enable mod_rewrite on Apache
Apache’s mod_rewrite module accelerates website performance by re-writing a request’s path on-the-fly, as opposed to requiring PHP to parse and process it. While Apache is installed on most web servers, not all installations of Apache have mod_rewrite enabled by default. To check if your web server has mod_rewrite enabled, use your preferred search engine to look for mod_rewrite Apache. For example, Google search mod_rewrite Apache
3) Do Upgrade the PHP Version
Though it’s not always easy, upgrading your website from PHP 5.6 to 7. x can dramatically improve performance. If you don’t want to upgrade manually, consider using a service like Cloudways that will handle all of these upgrades for you. They’re a managed hosting provider that offers automatic upgrades for WordPress, Magento, and more, including older versions of PHP if necessary. Hire top PHP developers in India to develop a great website.
4) Reduce Redundant Code
Is it possible to reduce redundant code? Reduce duplicate functions if they could be merged. Also, avoid unnecessarily repeating instructions. For example, if you have an IF/ELSE construct that is followed by another IF/ELSE construct, can they be combined into a single AND or OR statement instead?
These kinds of consolidation efforts may not make a huge difference in speed but every little bit helps and there are many performance-tuning tricks like these that you should try out to squeeze as much speed out of your code as possible.
5) Minify/Compress CSS and JS Files
As mentioned earlier, minifying and compressing files makes it so there is less data to transfer. It can make your site load in a few milliseconds faster than if you didn’t do it, which can be a huge difference for some people. If you are using a platform like WordPress or Joomla that allows you to modify code, make sure you clean up any stylesheets or scripts that they provide.
Additionally, don’t upload an enormous logo or company logo to your site; use something smaller like .png instead of .jpg. And lastly, remove any unnecessary HTML from pages and paragraphs; white space and line breaks aren’t doing anything for your site other than taking up space.
6) Optimize Your Database Queries
One of your biggest performance bottlenecks is likely your database, so it’s important to learn how to squeeze every last ounce of speed out of your SQL. For example, even if you have caching set up properly in your application, there are still dozens of ways you can accidentally use inefficient queries that slow things down. The same goes for poorly optimized joins or other tasks. Having a good understanding of what queries are taking longer than they should help you pinpoint where exactly you need to focus your efforts when trying to optimize performance.
7) Compress Images
Compressing your images on a page is incredibly important to make sure they load as quickly as possible. If you’re using image software like Photoshop, there are built-in tools that will compress them as you’re saving. Otherwise, there are a number of free and paid tools that can be used (just Google around for image compression tool and you should find something.)
For example, Picasa has some pretty advanced compression settings that can help shrink those files down. Just remember: A larger file doesn’t always mean a higher quality image—an oversized JPG may be good enough for most purposes but it won’t load in seconds like a smaller file might. So get to work on those images!
8) Deploy PHP on Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a great way to get your site up and running. Cloud servers can scale with ease, which makes them ideal for high-traffic sites. They also make it easy to set up and configure everything that you need on your site without worrying about purchasing and maintaining separate hardware.
Finally, cloud hosting is ideal for speed; you won’t have to worry about any bottlenecks or downtime on your server because there are plenty of other systems in place to take over if something goes wrong. If you run a PHP website, then cloud hosting is an easy way to ensure that it will always be as fast as possible.
9) Use Native PHP Functions
It’s always better to use native PHP functions instead of building everything from scratch. The scripts are optimized and tested by millions of people around the world, so if you use them your code will be able to take advantage of all those optimizations and bug fixes.
Plus, it will be easier for others to figure out how things work in your script because they’re already familiar with them. And if something doesn’t work as expected, you can easily find online help from other developers who’ve encountered a similar problem and already solved it. You’ll save yourself time and energy, and you’ll create a faster website for your visitors.
Conclusion
One of today’s biggest web-development challenges is speed. Whether it’s page load times, site responsiveness, or app performance, users have become increasingly intolerant of slow experiences. As such, many developers are turning to tools that can help them optimize how their sites and apps work in real-time.
As a result, two of today’s most important programming languages for development—PHP and Node. js—is being used in conjunction with optimization tools like Laravel Dusk and Jest to create faster experiences for end-users everywhere. If you’re looking to create fast content with minimal coding skills required, consider using one or more of these seven tips when making your next web app or site. You can get in touch with a top PHP development company for your web app development.
Also read: Why You Need A SaaS Application Development Company
