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Speed Up Your Joomla Website with JCH Optimize

Speed Up Your Joomla Website with JCH Optimize

During our recent webinar entitled, "How To Speed Up Your Joomla Site", Daniel from SiteGround suggested JCH Optimize to combine and minify your CSS and JavaScript files to make your Joomla site load much faster, which usually leads directly to a better user experience and a higher conversion rate.

We'll take you through the basics of how to set up JCH Optimize for combining and minifying files so you can give it a try on your own sites. As with any new Extension, always make sure you back up prior to installation, and try it in a development environment first to get an idea of how it will behave on your sites and in your environment.

To give a brief overview, here are some of the benefits of combining and minifying website files:

  • Number of HTTP requests are drastically reduced.
  • The visitor's web browser doesn't have to call as many files.
  • Page load time can be dramatically improved.
  • SEO is often improved.
  • User experience is greatly improved.

When using this Extension on a recent site, we were able to take the Home page load time from just over 8 seconds down to just over 3 seconds. Internal pages saw a general improvement from about 5 or 6 seconds to between 1 and 2 seconds page load time. The overall improvement in the feel of the website response was remarkable.

Whether or not you're paying attention to online tools such as Yslow and Page Speed Insights for page optimization, the real test is the real world "feel" of a website's behavior. An "A" grade on a badly loading page is not nearly as preferable as a quickly loading page with a "B" or "C" grade on those services. The thing to remember is that you should use those tools as references and guides in your fine tuning, but not as an end in themselves.

Go to GTMetrix.com and test your website before installing the Plug-in. You'll need to create an account so you can save your history of tests.

The Plug-in installs very easily. Once installed, you can find it in the plug-in manager, so enable it and get started with basic configuration.

jch-plugin-enabled

You can simply use the default configuration, but you may want to hold off on JavaScript settings for now as that takes more time checking to see that everything is working properly and can have unexpected results for beginners.

jch-plugin-settings

Also, it's important to make sure JCH Optimize is ordered last in your Plug-in ordering.

jch-plugin-order-last

With the Plug-in installed and configured, go through your site and make sure everything looks good. Head over to GTMetrix and re-run your tests. You may want to do this over the course of a couple of days and at different times just to see a good sample of results.

This one small addition may mean a huge improvement to your Joomla website, depending on your current setup. This is important for so many things, including visitor experience and Search Engine Optimization. Google tends to favor quick loading, highly optimized websites in their search results.

Remember that this is not a "set it and forget it" activity. Good optimization takes time and effort, but it is well worth it.

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Comments 7

Kevin Morrison on Friday, 26 April 2013 11:44

This is great Robert, I just ran it on a site that I have with lots of images and lengthy articles. I saw an instant 44% decrease in load time. This will become part of all my site builds moving forward. I think its real power is going to be seen on mobile views using responsive designs.

0
This is great Robert, I just ran it on a site that I have with lots of images and lengthy articles. I saw an instant 44% decrease in load time. This will become part of all my site builds moving forward. I think its real power is going to be seen on mobile views using responsive designs.
Robert Wilson on Friday, 26 April 2013 17:56

Awesome Kevin! Thanks for reporting back with your results.

We hope to do more articles on optimization in the future, so it's good to know they are useful for people.

0
Awesome Kevin! Thanks for reporting back with your results. We hope to do more articles on optimization in the future, so it's good to know they are useful for people.
Minnesota based Joomla expert on Friday, 03 May 2013 05:08

Slowness is one of the biggest pitfalls for Joomla, so great to post an article on speeding up Joomla sites. This is a quality extension. It's so important to keep the sites coming up quickly so visitors don't speed off.

0
Slowness is one of the biggest pitfalls for Joomla, so great to post an article on speeding up Joomla sites. This is a quality extension. It's so important to keep the sites coming up quickly so visitors don't speed off.
Robert Wilson on Tuesday, 07 May 2013 05:53

Thanks! We plan on continuing this theme of Joomla optimization as it's a huge part of good web development.

Let us know how you, working in the world of professional Joomla development, focus your optimization efforts.

By the way...saw your post with James Friesen recently. Very nice guy! Spent some time talking with him at the JWC.

http://www.happydogwebproductions.com/item/8-questions-with-james-friesen.html

0
Thanks! We plan on continuing this theme of Joomla optimization as it's a huge part of good web development. Let us know how you, working in the world of professional Joomla development, focus your optimization efforts. By the way...saw your post with James Friesen recently. Very nice guy! Spent some time talking with him at the JWC. http://www.happydogwebproductions.com/item/8-questions-with-james-friesen.html
Minnesota based Joomla expert on Wednesday, 08 May 2013 08:24

We're also working on optimizing for speed. But Joomla is such an ideal CMS, it has so many advantages to offer. We design responsively so that it's optimized for mobile, and mobile users can get the full benefits of Joomla on any device.
Thanks for reading the Happy Dog blog! James is a talented developer and a good guy, and we were happy to have him on the blog for the interview. We post interviews every Friday with industry leaders, so make sure to check back!

0
We're also working on optimizing for speed. But Joomla is such an ideal CMS, it has so many advantages to offer. We design responsively so that it's optimized for mobile, and mobile users can get the full benefits of Joomla on any device. Thanks for reading the Happy Dog blog! James is a talented developer and a good guy, and we were happy to have him on the blog for the interview. We post interviews every Friday with industry leaders, so make sure to check back!
Alex on Thursday, 06 June 2013 22:04

JCH is the major plugin for increase the speed of website, it's combines your external JavaScript and CSS files into one to minimize expensive http requests. there is lots of major features of JCH like:
Combine javascript/css files into one,
Combine background images in a sprite,
Minify (Compress) and gzip aggregated files,
Exclude individual files or files from extensions that do not aggregate well,
Can defer javascript or place at end of page for optimized download,
Support for @import rules in CSS files,

0
JCH is the major plugin for increase the speed of website, it's combines your external JavaScript and CSS files into one to minimize expensive http requests. there is lots of major features of JCH like: Combine javascript/css files into one, Combine background images in a sprite, Minify (Compress) and gzip aggregated files, Exclude individual files or files from extensions that do not aggregate well, Can defer javascript or place at end of page for optimized download, Support for @import rules in CSS files,
Guest - Ngimo on Monday, 16 December 2013 22:46

This is quite better to access and obviously works well, After using this particular plugin I must appreciate JCH optimize that reduces the load time and easily accessible. Thanks for the post.

0
This is quite better to access and obviously works well, After using this particular plugin I must appreciate JCH optimize that reduces the load time and easily accessible. Thanks for the post.

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