{"id":7208,"date":"2020-01-15T16:20:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T13:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/?p=7208"},"modified":"2026-03-08T23:16:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:16:03","slug":"6-essential-tips-to-improve-the-performance-of-your-drupal-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getdevdone.com\/blog\/6-essential-tips-to-improve-the-performance-of-your-drupal-website.html","title":{"rendered":"6 Essential Tips to Improve the Performance of Your Drupal Website"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the number of content management systems (CMS) nowadays is quite <\/span>impressive<\/span><\/a>, more small, mid-sized, and large companies are choosing Drupal, a powerful, secure, and scalable platform with freely available source code that currently ranks third in the <\/span>Open Source Usage Distribution<\/span><\/a> category worldwide. <\/span><\/p>\n

The CMS has a huge number of available modules (44,577 at the moment of writing the post). These help Drupal site owners implement any feature imaginable to suit their business needs. For all its advantages, though, a Drupal website, just like a site based on any other CMS, needs to be fine-tuned in order to show the best performance and speed.<\/p>\n

Fast website speed is important for<\/span> two main reasons<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The search engines, with Google at the head of the pack, hate websites running at a snail\u2019s pace. They value good user experience above all else and accept no compromises. If you fail to please the search engines, your site will get lost among millions of other resources without the ghost of a chance to make it to the top of search results pages. <\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Few of your visitors will agree to wait for more than a couple of seconds until your page loads. To prove how crucial the speed indicator is, consider<\/span> the case of an online retail company<\/span><\/a> that experienced an 11-percent drop in sales when its website loading time increased by just 500 milliseconds(!). <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Whether you\u2019re selling goods online, have a blog, or want to showcase your company on the Internet, you must optimize your site\u2019s performance to avoid losing the audience or customers. How can you do that? Follow the tips below and you should soon notice an increase in your Drupal site\u2019s speed.<\/p>\n

    6 TIPS ON A DRUPAL WEBSITE PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION <\/strong><\/h2>\n

    \"How<\/p>\n

    Tip #1: Prepare and Use Your Visuals the Right Way <\/span><\/h3>\n

    A website packed with colorful images and photographs is likely to enjoy <\/span>greater popularity<\/span><\/a> among users than pages with only text and a few low-quality visuals. That said, you should remember the other side of the coin: high-resolution images that are not optimized for the web properly can pull your Drupal website\u2019s speed down to the bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n

    We suggest that you apply the following techniques to <\/span>solve this problem<\/b>: <\/span><\/p>\n

    <u+2714> Load an image only when a visitor scrolls up or down to get it into view<\/u+2714><\/b>. This is different from the conventional approach, wherein the entire content is loaded at once. When you load an image \u201con-demand,\u201d this favorably reflects on your website\u2019s speed. <\/span><\/p>\n

    It\u2019s like an elevator in an apartment building: stationary when no residents need to go up or down, it only arrives after someone presses a call button on one of the floors.<\/p>\n

    How can you implement this technique? Install one of the many modules that developers have created exactly for this purpose, such as Lazy-load<\/a> or Image Lazy Loader<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    <u+2714> Optimize image file sizes.<\/u+2714><\/b><\/b> Images that weigh a ton, as we said earlier, are some of the principal causes of bad website performance. Avoid uploading large images to the CMS and then changing their dimensions in the code. It will only make things worse. <\/span><\/p>\n

    What you can do instead is use any graphics editor to resize all your visuals to make them more lightweight and only then add them to your Drupal site. We recommend keeping an image file size below the <\/span>1MB limit<\/b>. Read<\/span> this post<\/span><\/a> to learn more about optimizing images for the web. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Another image optimization method you can apply is <\/span>installing the<\/b> Image Optimize <\/span><\/a>module<\/b>. It allows you to optimize an image when it\u2019s saved<\/span> without losing quality<\/b>. <\/span><\/p>\n

    One word of caution, though. If you\u2019ve switched to Drupal 8 (which <\/span>you should do<\/span>, of course), the Image Optimize module for this version is still under active development, with only a more or less stable alpha version up for grabs. <\/span><\/p>\n

    <u+2714> Embed your images right into your CSS stylesheets. <\/u+2714><\/b><\/b>How is it possible? Just encode your visuals using the <\/span>Base64 format before you add them to CSS. In this case, there will be <\/span>no need to send a request to a server to retrieve the images. Read <\/span>this post <\/span><\/a>to learn more about the Base64 encoding technique. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Tip #2: Get Rid of Modules You Don\u2019t Need or Those That Are No Longer Supported <\/strong><\/h3>\n

    \"Get<\/p>\n

    Drupal, just like any other CMS, comes with some core functionality. If you need additional features, you can search the Drupal site for<\/span> suitable modules<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

    On the one hand, the large variety of modules Drupal offers is a blessing for any website administrator. On the other hand, however, this can negatively impact website performance if an admin gets carried away and installs too many add-ons \u201cjust in case.\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s like a shopping spree when people purchase things they don\u2019t really need. You read the description of a cutting-edge module for backing up the database, for instance, and say to yourself, \u201cWow, this is a good one! I want it,\u201d even though you already have a similar tool in your arsenal. Thus, you end up with an array of modules that cause your site to be as slow as molasses in January.<\/p>\n

    Why so? This is because every extension, even one that\u2019s inactive at the moment, executes its code and may need to fetch some data from the database. By the way, that\u2019s the reason why simply switching your modules to the disabled state won\u2019t do the trick. You have to <\/span>wipe out the <\/b>\u201coffending\u201d modules from your site altogether. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Low speed is not the only downside of having too many modules. A module that has received no updates for 6 months or more is a potential backdoor through which cybercriminals can get inside your system. This is a problem common for all content management systems, as the recent <\/span>wave of hacker attacks<\/span> on WordPress and Magento sites has illustrated. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Hence, we recommend taking stock of all your modules and <\/span>uninstalling<\/b>: <\/span><\/p>\n