Increase website speed

Naturally, the more megabytes the page content has, the longer it takes to load. Of course, it’s not a bad thing to have a lot of content on your website, as this is what will attract visitors! What is bad, however, is unnecessary content. That is, content that burdens the website without offering anything positive.

This is where ‘Code Minification & Image Optimization’ comes in, which we will explain below.

Every time your browser loads a file, it does so using the HTTP protocol, performing an HTTP Request. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communication protocol. It is the main protocol used in World Wide Web browsers to transfer data between a server and a client.

But what does all this mean and how does it affect your website’s speed?

This means that the more HTTP requests are made, the longer it takes for the entire page to load. What we can do is reduce the number of requests through ‘Code Optimization’, which we will analyze below.

Every time a user requests a web page, a series of processes take place before it appears on the screen in its entirety. It’s like giving someone an equation such as x = (2+3)² – (4/5-3)³ where ‘x’ is the complete web page, and waiting to see the result on our screen.

Most modern websites use a clever method to reduce computation time:

They store the result ‘x’ through caching, so that they don’t have to perform the same calculations over and over again for each visitor. They therefore “serve” a ready-made, stored result, thus dramatically increasing the speed of the website.

What we are called upon to do is optimize the caching function for even greater speed increases.

The server, i.e. the space where your website is hosted, plays one of the most important roles in its speed. A good server, both in terms of hardware (machines) and software settings, can boost your page..

No matter how optimized your page is in all of the above areas, if the server is not good, then the results will never be perfect, despite any improvements you may see. For maximum results, we recommend that you read below.

With this method, we increase the speed of the website by reducing the volume of its content. How do we do this?

1. We minimize the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code of your website by removing all spaces between commands, thereby dramatically reducing the number of lines of code and achieving faster parsing by the browser.
2. We remove unnecessary bytes from content images so that image quality is not compromised. In many cases, we can achieve a reduction of up to 70% without any noticeable difference in quality. However, the difference in website speed is impressive.

We take the minimized CSS and JavaScript files (see above) and compress them into as few files as possible. In other words, in an ideal case, after optimization we will have just one CSS file and one Javascript file, when a typical page may contain 20-25 Javascript files and 6-10 CSS files.

In this way, we reduce the HTTP requests, increasing the speed of the website.

Παίρνουμε την ήδη υπάρχουσα λειτουργία προσωρινής αποθήκευσης (caching) της ιστοσελίδας σας και την ανεβάζουμε επίπεδο:

1. We adjust its parameters so that it stores as much of the page as possible, while leaving out dynamic elements that are directly related to each user personally and should not be stored, such as the shopping cart, wish list, user account, etc.
2. We create a special file (htaccess) with commands to temporarily store your website data in visitors’ browsers. This way, the next time they visit your website, there will already be stored data on their computer, which will dramatically increase the loading and browsing speed. This memory lasts up to 1 month.

Firstidea is an official partner of Siteground. Siteground is the world’s most specialized hosting provider for Joomla! and WordPress websites. With applications specially developed for this type of website and machines specially configured for speed, security, and optimal performance, it is the top choice for hosting them..

It is guaranteed that by transferring your website to Siteground, either through one of our hosting and management packages or directly to theirs, you will see impressive results.

See below for Firstidea & Siteground hosting packages: