Member Article

Optimizing PHP website to boost your Business

With the world becoming a global village and everything available on the web, it makes sense to see new businesses developing a presence on the internet. Some businesses go through the route of setting up a social media account, some go a more professional route and set up a full-fledged website, while some do BOTH. Irrespective of the methods used, it is imperative to have a website to expand the ways you touch base with your customers, and one of the best ways to create a fully-functional a customizable website, is via using PHP.

PHP is a server side scripting language that adds that much needed customizability to your website. It is a very powerful resource if used the right way, but sometimes this resource can be a bit of a nuisance because of a few factors. Here, Iflexion developers discuss the factors from within your PHP codebase that can cause certain problems with your website, and how to ultimately get rid of them.

1. MODULES AND EXTENSIONS:

PHP has a lot of different frameworks that can help with your website. Some of them optimize the performance, others help increase the speed of your website, so it’s is important to know which one does what. WHY? Because sometimes you may not need a module or extension, depending upon your website, and it’s important to disable it, because otherwise, it will just slow down your website.

2. CUTTING BACK ON THE LOADING WAIT:

It is extremely important to cut back on the time your clients wait for your website to load. WHY? It’s obvious, nobody likes waiting. In order to reduce loading time, you can optimize your codebase by disabling framework features that aren’t in use, cutting back on functionalities of the system that are not in use at the moment and other things like that. Doing this won’t only reduce the time your customers wait for the loading of your website but also result in an increased customer conversion, guaranteed.

3. BEING EFFICIENT:

If your website has multiple pages, it is not necessary that each and every page will make use of PHP. There may be some static pages in your website, like an ABOUT page for example. If that is the case, avoid using PHP on pages like that, because it will just unnecessarily increase loading time since server side languages take more time to render.

4. THE DATABASE ACCESS:

Database is an important part of your website, and it is important to keep it optimized. All those SELECT statements really take a toll on your server, and once it reaches a particular number, your system can crash. And you don’t want that, do you? So if you take precautionary measures, like limiting the number of users accessing your database at a particular time, or by enabling your database to handle huge load effectively.

5. CACHING:

This is a no-brainer, Caching is one of the most underrated performance enhancing tweak available, PERIOD. People must have told you to do this uncountable number of times, and they are right in doing so. There are tools available in the market which can help you cache better, like APC and eAccelerator, and doing so significantly increases the performance of your website.

6. A LOOK AT THE FRONT-END:

It is probably worth a mention that the performance of your website can also be significantly reduced/increased by modifying the front-end codebase. An amalgamation of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, really puts the elegance and beauty of the design of your website, but sometimes because of improper usage, it can really go downhill. HOW? Simple things like using in-line CSS, instead of uploading a CSS file, using the script tags in the header, instead of the end, or even using high performance plug-ins in place of lightweight commodities, can severely increase loading time, in the result, possibly and potentially, leading to less traffic. So even though a lot of focus and time is spent on perfecting the back-end of a website to improve the efficiency, it is worth taking a look at the front-end as well, so that problems like these don’t hamper your website in particular and your business in general.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Deborah Belford .