Speed Optimization in 4 Minutes
Step 6 - Server Optimization
One of the last things to improve is your actual server, and should only be done once you're confident you've squeezed every bit of performance out of everything prior.
- Increase hardware resources: Just like your device that you're using to browse this page, the more memory, faster CPU, and better disk on the server, the faster it will serve your content.
- Optimize server software / settings: Check with your sysadmin to ensure your server software (ie, apache, nginx) is tuned properly. Same with your database. There are tons of settings that are very powerful if tweaked correctly.
- Consider load balancing: As a last resort (because it greatly increases complexity), spreading your servers and/or data across various datacenters will reduce both the load per server, and the time it takes to be sent.
Let's see how this affected our stats:
| Metric | This Load | Versus Last Step | Versus Baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to First Byte (TTFB) | - | - - | - - |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | - | - - | - - |
| Page Complete | - | - - | - - |
| Page Weight (transferred) | - | - - | - - |
Questions about these metrics?
Hover over the metrics above to see descriptions of each. Why didn't we choose other metrics, such as First Input Delay (FID) or Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)? Simply because they were hard to represent in this demo. FID requires user interaction, which is tricky to fake. CLS is a lifetime metric (measured the whole time you're on the page, not just during load), so we can't report that until you leave the page. There are a lot of very important speed metrics and it's encouraged to get to know more than the few here.
Compared to the baseline, all the optimizations so far have affected the complete page load by -.
To ensure valid comparisons, we've placed a specific amount of hidden html comments here so the textual content of every step is the same length.
Optimization not as great as you think? Good observation. Sometimes speed optimization is trial and error. Not all steps work well for every website.