Drupal 8 is a powerful CMS to build appealing websites and drive potential visitors. Its innovative features and appearance make it a great tool for your online requirements. Even though the CMS offers a great system for developing a website, there are number of improvements present to enhance Drupal 8 website performance. Speed and performance are a very crucial elements when it comes to customer engagement. Although content is the most important element, the overall functionality of the website is also very crucial.
Faster website navigation means that visitors are able to see more page views each time they open your site. Having an optimized website means a visitor can immediately understand your offering and buy your products. There are a few tips that every website developer can implement to increase the speed and performance of a website.
1. Keep it Simple:- One of the most prominent ways to make a Drupal Website faster is to implement a minimalist approach. Keeping the website simple and including only those elements which are a necessity is the best way to speed up a website. Eliminate unnecessary graphics, content and images from the website. Everything from modules to appealing themes can affect the performance of the website. By using fewer graphics and content, the site can deliver a much faster experience to the visitor.
2. Compress Images:- Images are an important element of website content and drives more visitors in comparison to textual content. But images of high-quality and size slow down the performance of the website. Google ranks websites that are fast and properly optimized. The simplest process to optimize the images is to compress them to the right size before uploading. Don’t include graphics of high-resolution and then try to fit them by modifying the size with the help of code. Drupal 8 CMS has the feature to resize the images and include the appropriate image for the website. It can scale, crop, and optimize the images to reduce the bandwidth needed to load a specific web page. This can fast the load time to a great extent.
3. Use CDN:- There are several third-party extensions that you can integrate with Drupal 8 to speed up website performance. A CDN stores the website on different servers all over the world. CDN service provider firms have data centers in every continent and in every city. CDN makes copies of the website and stores it into servers that are a lot closer to the visitor’s location. The process is by default on most of the hosting providers nowadays. If Drupal doesn’t require the recreation of HTML, then CDN serves it directly, greatly eliminating the load times.
4. Website Caching:- Caching is an incredible process to ensure speed of the website is optimized. This is when elements of the website are properly saved and used when someone opens the website. It’s like settings of a program is saved when you use it on a daily basis. Drupal 8 has some built-in methods that don’t require clearing cache on a regular basis. But, some extensions actually have greater control and reliability than the included methods.
5. Update PHP Version:- PHP is the foundation of a number of CMSs including Drupal. Each PHP version has the perspective to enhance website performance. Make sure your website has the most stable version to improve the customer experience. Many hosting providers offer a feature to update the version of PHP using cPanel. From a drop-down menu, you can choose which version is required. But, be careful about changing software versions. Some modules or scripts may not support old versions of PHP, thus remain updated to optimize the website performance.
6. Optimize Database:- Apart from optimizing the website code, the database can also be optimized. Database plays a huge role in lowering the speed of the website. It’s always a great idea to optimize the database by properly removing the data and unnecessary chunks of data. Instead of making regular queries to the database, the data is readily present. This process also works on shared web hosting plans.
Conclusion:- Improving Drupal 8 website performance will definitely lead to a better experience for both users and search engines. Once the speed is optimized, the website has the potential to drive visitors in large number ultimately growing sales & ROI. If you are lacking an optimized website, it is the best time to avail quality Drupal 8 Development Services and get an optimized performance. With so many potential customers looking for products, it is the appropriate way to improve sales and boost ROI at an impressive speed.
