When it comes to judging the robustness of a web application, performance is the most important element that a developer must consider and focus on. It defines the functioning of their core features, as how fast they execute and operates in case of the web server calls. That is why it is important for developers to always use those hidden techniques that make the execution of web applications fast. The little tricks that can do wonders for them by making their websites one of the fastest to load on the browsers and web searches.
PHP is generally known as the most lightweight programming language in the world, which is why most of the developers opt for it to build their applications. It has relatively fast execution as compared to the other languages and supports various advanced programming frameworks to further ease the dev works.
But still, PHP has some areas of improvement of too, in which performance is one of the most debated concerns. Hence, this article briefs about those specific tips which make the performance of a web application fast and gives it a swift load time on best PHP hosting platforms.
Let’s discuss some of them below:
Optimize Site Caches
Recompiling identical codes and executing its procedural calls every time can affect website performance. It takes a lot of time to execute the same code functions and libraries that are already in place and makes it harder for browsers to load them at a faster speed in the case of server calls. That is where you need to store caches to ensure fast execution of the repetitive functions.
There are many pre-built caching tools available in the market that helps you to optimize the load time of applications. Using tools like OPCache, Redis and Varnish, you can effortlessly manage the caching functions of your applications and can make them perform better with the fast load time response.
Cloudways provides all of these caching tools (Redis, Varnish, PHP-FPM etc.) preconfigured on its platform. Using Cloudways Thunderstack, you can easily integrate all of these tools into your applications, as they can be simply enabled/disabled from the backend hosting dashboard within just a few clicks.
Identifying Database Delays
The database is one of the core parts of any application, which is why it is always advised to keep its operations fast and efficient. Many performance bottlenecks contribute towards the slow execution of database resources, but in most cases, they remain uncovered. It is necessary to identify those loopholes quickly to make the data access swift to avoid any unwanted response delays.
To make sure those access delays don’t occur time and again, turn on the slow SQL logs to identify and address the bad performing queries. Using the logs, you can assess the efficiency of those queries, as to how fast they execute and what optimization practices they need to have. Similarly, it also lets you know about those queries which are being made several times during a single execution and allows you to make adjustments in them to appropriately boost the performance of the query execution.
Monitor Your APIs Constantly
Most of the applications rely upon third-party APIs for carrying out different external operations. It is advised to monitor the performance of those APIs constantly, as they can also affect the load time of your applications. Though, it is understood that those APIs are out of your control and you can not alter their core functions manually, but still there are some actions you can take to mitigate the problems initiating from those APIs.
For instance, you can cache the output of the API for later efficient use or can make background API calls to ease the frontend process. You can also define timeouts for particular APIs and can make the application less dependent on APIs when they are not needed.
Reduce Server Response Time
One of the major factors that trigger the slow page load time is the sluggish response of DNS provider. A DNS (Domain Name System) is a server that contains a database of IP addresses and their associated hostnames. When a user types a website URL into the browser, the backend of the browser sends that URL to the DNS server provider, which translates that URL into the IP address that indicates its server location.
Therefore, it is always advised to choose the DNS provider very wisely, as most of the time despite all the best optimization efforts – the DNS server lets the application’s performance down due to its slow speed. You can always find out the best performing DNS providers in the market through various online comparison portals like SolveDNS, DNSPerf and others.
Running a Compression Audit
It is in your best interest to keep the size of your application files as small as they can be. It totally doesn’t mean that you have the compromise the quality of your files by going for the lower size, but it means that you have to run the regular compression tests to keep the excessive size of your files in minimum check. Remember, the smaller your application files will be, the faster will be their load time, in fact of the overall application.
Pages with bigger images, GIFs, and videos mostly end up being oversized, that’s why they often force the application to load slower than expected. To speed up their load time, you can reduce their excessive size by compressing them with Gzip, which is known as a standard tool to compress the larger sized files. This compression process doesn’t affect the quality of your files, instead just reduces their additional MBs to the much smaller KBs, so that their access becomes easier and swift.
Final Words
There are many factors that can help you optimize your PHP applications with greater load time. You can use various monitoring tools to identify the bottlenecks that can help you address the performance issues with appropriate optimization techniques. This article highlighted some of them and gave a little insight on how to fix them. It defined those key modifications which can help you achieve greater application performance without doing any major code overhaul.
If you still think you can contribute to this topic, please feel free to mention your ideas in the comments section below.