Joomla Optimization

Your Joomla website is running very slowly? We can optimize it for you!

At itoctopus, we have optimized many Joomla websites and we have reduced their server load from an unmanageable level to an extremely comfortable level. In fact, we are currently managing 4 extremely large Joomla sites (each with more than 100K articles) that get an insane amount of traffic (about 100K uniques/day) and they’re all working very smoothly, so, we’re sure we can optimize any Joomla website you throw at us.

So, how do we optimize Joomla sites?

There are several steps that we perform in order to optimize a Joomla instance.

  • We check that the performance issues are not caused by abnormal/external factors: For example, performance issues can be caused by a hacked website, some firewall rules, a move to a slower hard drive, an extension, etc… In fact, there are 7 reasons other than database size and real traffic that can cause performance issues on your Joomla website.

  • We optimize the database server: We modify the my.cnf MySQL configuration file which is located under the /etc folder of your Linux box to ensure that it takes full advantage of your system’s specifications.

  • We optimize the slow queries: We enable the slow query log in the my.cnf file and we optimize any query that it is taking more than 1 second. Query optimization consists of adding the right indexes to the right tables and/or modifying the slow queries. The ideal goal of this optimization is to reach a slow query log of size 0.

  • We use Sphinx: A common issue causing performance problems on Joomla sites is the search functionality: it is very poorly designed, and that’s why we install, configure, and integrate Sphinx. Once we do that, all searches on the Joomla site will be routed to the Sphinx engine, thus alleviating a huge load off the server.

  • We optimize the PHP code: An often overlooked factor in the performance of a Joomla website is the PHP code, especially the PHP code of the 3rd party extensions. We analyze the installed extensions and perform any PHP code optimization when necessary.

So, what happens after we optimize your Joomla website?

Your Joomla website will breathe and you will feel it! The website will respond faster and this will reflect positively on your SEO rankings and ultimately your traffic. Let us give you an example: back in May of 2017, we optimized a Joomla website that was struggling with 300 simultaneous users. In December of 2017, the client emailed and told us that his website was now getting 900 concurrent users, and that he wanted us to do another round of optimization!

If your Joomla website is quite large and/or receives a lot of traffic, then it’ll be very likely that we have done some core optimizations (which are unavoidable). In that case, we will need to handle any updates done on your website because an update may wipe out the core optimizations that we have performed on your website. That being said, our aim is not to make your website completely dependent on us, and that’s why we send you the list of modified core files in case you want to port the core modifications yourself.

If you are having performance issues on your Joomla website and you want us to optimize it, then all you need to do is to contact us. Our fees are extremely affordable and our results are guaranteed!