Boost Your Website's Drupal Performance

Here you are, super excited and quite proud of your content-driven Drupal website that:

you can customize to your liking
“spoils” you and your team with a highly flexible editorial workflow, with a great administrator experience
comes with unmatched scalability which allows you to project your business far into the future, in other words: to dare and to dream big.

No matter what “floods” of traffic and “truckloads” of data/content the future has in store for you, Drupal's got you covered!

How about speed?

It would be a pity to compromise its powerful heavy content-handling capabilities “in the name of” top speed now wouldn't it?

You don't have you!

Your content “load” and your Drupal website's complex architecture can remain “unharmed” while you continue to dream big in terms of page loading super speed if you implement these 10 techniques to speed up your Drupal performance:

1. Is Your Site Running on The Latest Version of Drupal?

As obvious and quick and easy (compared to other “tweaks for speed”) this performance-booster might be, there still are Drupal website owners or Drupal developers that overlook or underestimate it!

Don't be one of those who rush in to implement the more advanced performance-improving tactics and skip the “elementary” ones!

So, you've got our point: always make sure to update to the latest version of Drupal.

Needless to add that it's that version, the last released one by the Drupal community, that has all the bugs and errors that you might be facing right now already solved. Not to mention that all the other “surprise” upgrades and improvements that it's been supercharged with while your site was still running on an older version.

2. Boost Your Drupal Performance Using a CDN

Get used to picturing your Drupal website's visitors as “highly demanding”!

They might be impressed with your site's (high quality) content richness, but their first impression will worsen, drastically, if that "highly valuable" content takes ages to load!

Therefore, consider relying on a content delivery network (CDN) for delivering the content (obviously!) that your users will request at a higher speed.

3. Configuration Changes: a Simple, Yet Effective Performance Tuning

Before you rush to tackle the bigger issues affecting your Drupal performance, make sure you do all the basic configuration settings!

Such as this configuration "trick" here, aimed at helping you to boost your Drupal performance: got to Administer- Site configuration- Performance.

It's there that you can make your own "inventory" of all the options at hand for JavaScript optimization, CSS optimization and page cache. They're handy speed-boosting options, so why not use them? It's just a matter of box-checking after all!

Make sure to check all the key boxes there such as "Compress cached pages", "Aggregate JavaScript files" (and the CSS ones, of course - CSS JS aggregation), "Cache pages for anonymous users" etc.

4. Spare The Resources Invested in Displaying 404 Error Pages

No matter how brilliantly-customized and appealingly-designed your 404 error page might be, it will still use valuable server resources!

So, you might want to first get your website scanned using software such as Screaming Fog or Online Broken Link Checker. To identify its “weak points”, its non-existing pages, broken URLs and noneffective content sections than to rely on a Drupal-dedicated module for displaying a 404 error page each and every time there's a requested content-related issue.

For all the other cases when you have no choice and you just have to get the “resource-consuming” 404 error page displayed, you might want to enable Drupal Fast 404.

It's one of Drupal's modules designed with to speed in mind, you know! It will use just 1 MB of your server's memory.

5. How Heavy Is Your Website's “Load” of Unused Modules?

It's in a CMS's nature (and Drupal's definitely no exception) to “ship with” a heavy load of modules and plugins.

Now, can you remember our advice from a previous post on this blog? “If there's a module for it, it doesn't mean you have to rush in and install it on your site” (or something like that; if you want to test my memory you can always look over that blog post again).

Therefore, consider it as a “spring cleaning“ for your Drupal website!

Go through all of them, make a list including 3 major categories: the “crucial” ones, the ones you've actually never used and those which, once uninstalled, wouldn't impact your website functionality at all (be “cruel”, be “honest” with yourself!).

You'll be surprised by how much load you'll ease your Drupal website off just by carrying out this task: disabling and even removing all the unused/unnecessary Drupal modules from your site!

Combined with a well-tuned cache (that we'll be tackling in this post, as well), getting rid of your modules overload is probably one of the most efficient ways to boost your Drupal website's performance!

6. Speed It Up: Aggregate Your CSS and JavaScript Files

And here's another factor that dramatically influences your website's overall performance: Drupal's “burden” of CSS and JavaScript files!

It's Drupal itself that provides the solution: it enables these files' aggregation so that they load together and significantly improve your website's front end performance.

Fewer HTTP requests will automatically lead to faster page loading time, as simple as that!

7. Is Your Website a Drupal Cache System-Powered One?

Learning how to trigger Drupal's cache system's “superpower” is one of the best tactics to boost your Drupal website's performance with!

If we are, to sum up, in a very rudimentary manner, how Drupal's caching system works, it would be something like this:

a user lands on your website
tries to access a certain page on your site
that specific request gets stored (a copy of it, course) in an easily accessible location so that it will load quicker for the next user who'll land on your site and try to access the very same page

Got it?

Now since it's a whole caching “system” that we've referred to, you should know that there are dedicated Drupal modules that you can put in charge of all the caching going on on your website:

The Internal Page Cache module: it caches and stores anonymous visitors' page requests, delivering them much quicker to future users trying to access them
The Internal Dynamic Cache module: a great “tool” for improving your page load time both for anonymous and for logged-in visitors

You simply can't afford (it would be quite “reckless” to overlook this performance-booster) not to use Drupal's cache system to its true potential. Especially since it “overwhelms” you with so many types of caches that you only need to enable:

page caching
panel caching
PHP caching
Views caching

8. Is Your Current Web Hosting Satisfying Your Need for Speed?

A fast web hosting is key when it comes to optimizing your Drupal website for high speed!

It's one aspect that you can't afford getting “tight-fisted” about! So, you may want to keep the distance from those web hosting providers offering you “irresistible” prices at the cost of shared resources that will just bog down your website.

Piece of advice: make sure to choose a Drupal specific host!

It's another great “trick” when you want to boost your Drupal performance!

9. Set Up a Reverse Proxy and Your Drupal Server

Call this technique an “HTTP accelerator”!

It will streamline the whole cached copies delivery process thanks to the “go-between” server that it relies on.

10. Optimize The Main “Culprits” for Low Speed: Images

That's right, it's the load of images on your website that's consuming most of its resources and, implicitly, which have the greatest impact on your site's loading speed.

The solution?

Optimize, optimize, then optimize some more!

And since when it comes to images optimization is just another word for compression, you do that: compress the images slowing down your Drupal website!

Tip: among many other built-in “treats” that the innovative Drupal 8 spoils us, developers in Toronto, with, there are its awesome image optimization features.

We're referring here to Image Styles, for instance (then you get “by default”) which enables you to optimize your images' sizes so that they're the perfect fit for any type of device, irrespective of its screen size!

And this is our “decalogue”! Our list of 10 speed-up techniques, ranging from basic to a bit more advanced, that you should consider when you decide to boost your Drupal website's performance!

How does your own list of top speed-boosters look like?

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Magento vs Shopify 2020: Which Platform Should You Use for Your eCommerce Store? And Why?

A bit stuck? Are you looking to roll out your online store, but… you’re struggling with a Magento vs Shopify 2020 dilemma? Which solution works best for the size and the type of your eCommerce business? Which one covers most of your feature needs? In today’s post you’ll get your answers to the following questions: How are they different? Why would you choose Shopify over Magento? What are its strongest selling points? What are the cons of Shopify? What are the pros and cons of Magento vs Shopify? Which eCommerce platform works best for your type of business? 1. What Are the Major Differences Between Magento and Shopify? The main reason why you’re torn between Magento and Shopify is that: You don’t have a clear picture of the essential differences between them. So, let me expose them to you: 1.1. Magento is an eCommerce solution for enterprise-level online stores. It’s robust and flexible enough to power fully customized eCommerce websites, built from scratch — that you can further expand to fit your growth plan — by teams of Magento developers. 1.2. Shopify, on the other hand, is self-managed. You don’t need any specialized skills — or server-side techs — to set up a Shopify store. A front-end developer and a designer, at most, will do. “How easy is it to use Shopify?” Shopify is best-known for being beginner-friendly. In short, the “Magento vs Shopify” dilemma comes down to: Flexibility and customization vs Ease of use. Which one's more important to you? 2. Magento vs Shopify 2020: Why Would You Choose Shopify? What makes Shopify a candidate for the title of “the best solution for creating an eCommerce website in 2020"? Here’s why Shopify could be the better choice for your online store: you have no (or limited) coding skills the idea of having a huge app marketplace at your disposal to browse through sounds tempting to you you need to get your e-Store up and running… now: the drag-and-drop website builder allows you to set up a new store in… minutes it’s an end-to-end eCommerce solution that you’re looking for, one that enables you to roll out and manage your online store with no technical experience it’s easier to use: its interface is famous for being particularly user-friendly you run a small or medium-sized eCommerce business page loading time is critical for you: Shopify’s just… fast Overall, it’s much less of a headache than Magento and usually the go-to option for small eCommerce business owners, with no web development experience, who need to get their websites rolled out fast. 3. What Are the Cons of Shopify? What could make you hesitate to choose Shopify for your eCommerce website? For there are, indeed, some limitations to consider before going for this particular platform: You’d be trading some of the control over your online store for… ease of use and the convenience of setting up your eStore quick and easy, with no technical expertise You do get a huge collection of plugins to choose from but… they all come with a price tag on; one that you’ll need to consider when planning out your budget You won’t be able to customize every single aspect of your website. By comparison, Magento puts no limitation on the configurations that you can make to your site Shopify provides you with weaker SEO features It charges a transaction fee per… sale 4. Why Would You Choose Magento over Shopify? When dealing with a Magento vs Shopify 2020 dilemma, what could make you opt for Magento? Lots of reasons... Here are the strongest ones: It enables you (or your team of Magento developers in Toronto) to customize everything about your eCommerce website, from theme to checkout process, to main menu, to email template, to... You get to build custom functionality for your website, that’s not available on the market You have lots of extensions available to choose from — Magento being open-sourced — and to customize your online store You benefit from its strong SEO capabilities You get to tap into its multi-store functionality: Magento enables you to manage all your online stores from one central dashboard “In fact, according to eCommerce Platforms research Magento SEO scores 95 out of 100, and that is great result!” (source: Cart2Cart ) In short, you’d want to go with Magento because it enables you to build pretty much anything that you might need for your eCommerce website. 5. What About the Cons of Using Magento? For you need to be aware of the disadvantages of using this eCommerce solution, as well, before you make any decision. Now, here are the most… discouraging ones: Building a fully customized website in Magento takes time and requires web development experience and Magento expertise; you can’t get away without a team of back-end Magento developers to handle the whole process and all the customization wok You do have a large and thriving community to rely on, but no 24/7 dedicated support (like you have with Shopify) You’ll need to optimize your Magento website on a regular basis to make sure it keeps performing at its best You’ll need to take into account the cost of all the extensions that you might want to add, of the web hosting service, and the Magento expertise needed 6. Magento 2 vs Shopify vs... Shopify Plus: Which One’s the Best Fit? Considering that, starting June 2020, Magento 1.0 is no longer supported, your Magento vs Shopify 2020 dilemma turns into: “Magento 2 vs Shopify”. What new features does Magento 2 bring to the debate? simplified navigation (even) better customization capabilities better performance a more admin-friendly panel drag-and-drop layout editing improved checkout “And what about Shopify Plus?” you might then ask yourself. Here are some of the enhancements that Shopify Plus ships with, so you can see for yourself whether it’s the best fit for what you’re looking for: It gives you greater control over your online store: you gain more customization freedom It’s robust enough to handle more than 10,000 transactions per minute, which makes it a viable alternative to Magento 2 for enterprise-level eCommerce businesses You’re free to edit your checkout page (a feature that’s not available in Shopify) You get your own launch manager: basically, a dedicated Shopify Plus team will handle everything for you, from implementing the custom Shopify theme that you need to code writing 7. Which Commerce Platform Works Better for Your Type of eCommerce Business? Now that you have a clear(er) picture of the pros and cons of Magento vs Shopify, how do you know which one’s the best fit for you? For your business goals and size? It’s simple: just pick the answer(s) that best fits your scenario from the following ones: You’ll want to use Magento if: you have a large product catalog your customization needs are… above the average (i.e. complex product configurations): you want a fully customized online store built from the ground up you need a commerce platform robust enough to support your entire network of vendor/supplier fulfillment channels you have qualified Magento developers in your team (or the budget to hire some professionals, who know what they’re doing) You’ll want to use Shopify over Magento in 2020 if: it’s a small to medium product catalog that you need to set up being able to integrate/cross-sell on multiple platforms is a crucial feature for you you need to get your storefront online as quickly as possible Does this head-to-head help you with your Magento vs Shopify 2020 dilemma? No matter which one’s the “winner”, the next question stays the same: “How do I get my Shopify/ Magento website built and suited to my needs?" Just drop us a line and we’ll have either our Shopify or our Magento expert team assigned to your eCommerce project! Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay ... Read more

Adriana Cacoveanu / Sep 18'2020

Drupal Drupal 8 Tips Web Design

5 tips to pass your Acquia Site Studio (Cohesion) Certification Exam

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to take the Acquia Site Studio (formerly Cohesion) Certification exam. In this post we are going to discuss why I took this exam and more importantly, how I passed it and became an Acquia Certified Site Studio Site Builder. Optasy and its commitment to quality through knowledge You already know that quality is part of the corporate culture of Optasy. For us quality is a key factor to protect our clients' investments and guarantee them a high ROI. But having a good QA department is not enough. Actually, it's often too late when the QA team detects an issue. At Optasy we prefer to ensure quality at the early stages of our projects, analyzing deeply the needs of our clients and transform them into effective digital experiences but we also know that the quality of the code we produce comes from the experience and the skills of our developers. That's why Optasy has an internal 'skill knowledge acquisition program' to help its employees (optasians) to acquire new skills or improve them. This program gives to each optasian one day off per month (paid by the company) to study a particular field. As a way to ensure knowledge acquisition and validation, optasians also receive paid leave to study and give their Acquia certification exams. This includes the exam cost too, that’s why many of the optasian developers are actually Acquia Certified developers or Acquia Certified site builders All things considered, it was a pretty easy choice for me to take the exam, not only do I get to improve my skills, but I get paid for it too! What are the Acquia certification programs? Acquia is a preferred Optasy partner that delivers a cloud-based digital experience platform built on Drupal that enables organizations to build experiences that scale. Acquia is committed to facilitating certification programs allowing developers to validate their Drupal skills year after year. Acquia certification exams are administered at Kryterion Testing Centers in more than 750 locations across the globe. Exams are also available as online-proctored tests and are often offered at DrupalCons across the world. What is Acquia Site Studio? Acquia Site Studio (formerly Cohesion) is a low-code solution for building and editing Drupal sites. As an Acquia partner, our team got the chance to become an early adopter of the technology. Acquia Site Studio is a sort of layout builder on steroids without writing any line of code. Not only can you build layouts or templates, but also you can build whole websites from the headers to the footers, and everything in between, like components and widgets, just by using the interface. No code required! It's a kind of atomic design system (like Pattern Lab) where you can create and preview CSS style guides, components, template layouts, page layouts or view layout from a visual user interface with simple “drag and drop”. And all of this within your Drupal site! To be fair, Acquia Site Studio is an amazing tool allowing designers and marketers to create and modify any layout component without calling the development team. If you’re a designer with no coding knowledge you’ll be able to create totally unique layouts based on your designs using intuitive drag and drop layout builder. If you're an editor, you may choose the layout you want to use and add all the pre-designed components you wish. Want to add a slider or a 'Related Articles' block? You drag and drop it in your layout! 5 tips to successfully pass your Acquia Certified Site Studio exam As other Acquia Certification exams, the Certified Site Studio exam requires both experience and knowledge. Though the test is not difficult, it’s not something you want to run into unprepared. From my experience, the questions ranged from a very low to medium range of difficulty, there were barely any difficult questions. This exam validates your ability to: Understand the features and functionality provided by Site Studio Install and configure Site studio environment on new or existing websites. Build a website using Site Studio style builder, components and website structure design elements. The official description of this exam can be found on Acquia's certification overview page. But in short: The tests are all multiple choice. They don't require that you actually configure a Drupal site or write any code. They are available in person at a testing center, or at home by installing the exam software on your computer. The price was $155 (In my case, Optasy paid for the test) Get a good understanding of Drupal Layout Builder As I mentioned earlier, Acquia Site Studio is a Layout Builder on steroids and many concepts are the same, so having some experience with this Drupal module will help you a lot, like the inline editing tools or the concept of drawing element into the layout. This is not mandatory, but I felt really comfortable with Site Studio having this previous experience. Read carefully the contents of the exam On Acquia's certification overview page you'll find the blueprint of the exam like the following: But below it, you'll find the content itself. Read it carefully and repeatedly. This should be your guideline during your study. This will help you focus on what really matters but also to recap and structure your notes. Read and study the documentation While there are really good videos on the Acquia Academy site about Site Studio, watching all of them won't be enough. If you don't have prior experience with Site Studio, it's a good starting point. But it definitively won't give all the knowledge you need to pass the exam. Reading the documentation should sound obvious, but you'll really need to read and study all the documentation in depth. Don't leave anything behind cause the exam covers all the aspects of Site Studio, from the basics to more advanced topics. This will also give you the right vocabulary to understand the questions of the exam, since sometimes they can try to trick you changing just one word. So the technical vocabulary has an important role, and that's where the documentation comes into play. Write down some notes after reading each section. This will help you a lot during the recap! Train on the Acquia Site Studio demo environment You can request an online demo environment for free at the bottom of this page The main benefit is that you won't need an API key or an Agency key, so you can test Site Studio for free, the environment acts just like a normal Drupal website. and the site will be all yours to experiment on. This site will be your friend during your study, you should test everything you learned in the documentation here. Do it several times and try different cases. The night before the exam, after reading back your notes, try to build a site from scratch in this environment to recap all the main concepts. This is key! Don't forget the 'Miscellaneous concepts and features' part These three concepts are not placed in one section, they are dispersed in the documentation. Study and practice all of them because you'll have a question about each one. They are only three, it doesn’t sound like a lot but they are worth 15% of the exam! That is a quick and easy win! A bonus tip What really worked for me was to read a section, practice the concepts of this section in the demo environment, read again the same section and take some notes. The day after, read all the notes of the previous day, do the same 7 days later, reading back your notes and practicing again on the demo site. That way, 80% of what you studied will stay forever in your memory. Conclusions Acquia Certification Site Studio Site Builder can be a good way to validate your skills and knowledge There are barely any difficult questions Study all the documentation because the exam is based on it, but also because the exam will cover all of it. Practice a lot, recap a lot. ... Read more

Karim Boudjema / Aug 27'2020

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Why Cloud-Native Apps? How Exactly Can Cloud Native Applications Benefit Your Business?

For it all comes down to this: what's the return that you'd get from switching to this new way of developing applications? Why cloud-native apps? How does migrating from cloud-hosted to cloud native applications translate into clear benefits for you? For your own business? We've listed them, then... shortlisted them to the 6 biggest benefits that you can expect from developing cloud native apps. Or, if you wish, the top 6 reasons why you'll want to use a cloud-native architecture from now on. But First: What Are Cloud Native Applications More Precisely? They're collections of independent, loosely coupled microservices, each one performing a single service or business function. Unlike the traditional "monolithic" app architecture, where you have a single... block. So that whenever you needed to apply even a small change, you had to interrupt the entire app. And it's precisely this intrinsic constraint of the monolithic approach — translating into limited scalability and flexibility — that has made the cloud-native model so "tempting": it allows you to develop and deploy each microservice independently so, whenever you need to apply changes, you're no longer constrained to wait first for all the components to get updated you can incorporate the new features (in many cases, suggested by users themselves) and deliver the app to your audience right away #1: You Get to Incorporate User Feedback into Your App in... Real-Time Why cloud-native apps? Due to their high availability: You get to make real-time changes to your applications... on the fly. ... to respond to users' expectations of specific new features and functionalities faster than with the traditional app development model. "Continuous improvement" is the key phrase here: You're free to add and roll back new features and enhance its performance... constantly. On the go. #2: You Benefit from a Higher Developer Productivity And this is another one of the key cloud native application benefits. The cloud-native architecture: speeds up the development process helps your team save time, that they'd otherwise need to spend trying to solve various infrastructure issues and handling critical business requirements instead enables easy remote access to their system, irrespective of their location #3: Why Cloud-Native Apps? Because You Can Build, Update, and Deliver them Faster The cloud-native approach enables you to scale your resources and comply with user demand way faster than the monolithic approach: You get to bring new features online — requested by your users — more quickly. To roll out changes and start marketing your app much faster. In short, you get to be more responsive to user demand and more relevant with the updates you make to your app in… real time. #4: You Save Time and Money From all the cloud native applications advantages, cost-savings must be the most tangible one. And it’s pretty obvious if you come to think of it: Since the cloud-native approach to developing applications allows you to build and release them much faster, you’re practically left with more time. More time to focus on your other revenue-generating tasks. #5: You Can Make or Roll Back Small Changes Without "Freezing" the Entire App Why cloud native applications? Because you can minimize downtime when you need to update your app. #6: You Get to Run Your App on Multiple Platforms Cloud native applications run on both public and private platforms without you being forced to make any major changes. For “flexibility” (along with “efficiency” and “high availability”) is another word for cloud-native. So, Why Cloud-Native Apps? It’s simple: You get to innovate faster and to react to users’ changing needs and trends... faster. Do you already have an app idea and you just need the right team to, ask the right questions, grasp your vision, and… make it happen? Just drop us a line, let’s hear all about it and let's... build it! Image by Ashish Bogawat from Pixabay ... Read more

Adriana Cacoveanu / Aug 15'2020

How to Boost Your Drupal Performance: 10 Simple, But Effective Techniques

1. Is Your Site Running on The Latest Version of Drupal?

2. Boost Your Drupal Performance Using a CDN

3. Configuration Changes: a Simple, Yet Effective Performance Tuning

4. Spare The Resources Invested in Displaying 404 Error Pages

5. How Heavy Is Your Website's “Load” of Unused Modules?

6. Speed It Up: Aggregate Your CSS and JavaScript Files

7. Is Your Website a Drupal Cache System-Powered One?

8. Is Your Current Web Hosting Satisfying Your Need for Speed?

9. Set Up a Reverse Proxy and Your Drupal Server

10. Optimize The Main “Culprits” for Low Speed: Images

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How to Boost Your Drupal Performance: 10 Simple, But Effective Techniques

1. Is Your Site Running on The Latest Version of Drupal?

2. Boost Your Drupal Performance Using a CDN

3. Configuration Changes: a Simple, Yet Effective Performance Tuning

4. Spare The Resources Invested in Displaying 404 Error Pages

5. How Heavy Is Your Website's “Load” of Unused Modules?

6. Speed It Up: Aggregate Your CSS and JavaScript Files

7. Is Your Website a Drupal Cache System-Powered One?

8. Is Your Current Web Hosting Satisfying Your Need for Speed?

9. Set Up a Reverse Proxy and Your Drupal Server

10. Optimize The Main “Culprits” for Low Speed: Images

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Browse cities

Toronto

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Partners