Postings
Speedy Web
With Google incorporating a “website speed” factor into site rankings, it has created renewed interests in rendering performance of web sites/apps. As a techie who has spent most of her career around web app delivery & performance, I’d like to highlight some (known) techniques and offer a few insights.
Browser-Side Optimization
Steve Souder identified 14 rules in his book for optimizing the performance of any given web page:
- Make Fewer HTTP Requests
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Add an Expires Header
- Gzip Components
- Put Stylesheets at the Top
- Put Scripts at the Bottom
- Avoid CSS Expressions
- Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Reduce DNS Lookups
- Minify JavaScript
- Avoid Redirects
- Remove Duplicates Scripts
- Configure ETags
- Make Ajax Cacheable
These rules are primarily focused on reducing the impact of bandwidth, network latency, and the rendering of html/javascript/css.
Server-Side Optimization
As web applications become more complex and database-driven, a sluggish backend may completely negate any performance gains from client-side optimization. Back in 2003 when I managed the World Health Organization’s website, we employed a CMS tool that published all the content in static html. This allowed us to deliver a large quantity of (frequently updated) content without needing to scale out the CMS to handle millions of requests. (more…)
Filed under: httpd, web X.0 — appgirl @ 10:57 amComments (1)
About
My name is Catherine Liao and you're reading the latest postings of various blogs I follow. You'll notice that the topics tend to center around Cloud Computing, Data Center, Virtualization, Servers, Web Technologies and 24x7 Operations.
These are topics that I'm interested in as I've spent a large chunk of my professional career building, deploying, and maintaining 24x7 application delivery environments. I use the knowledge I've garnered daily in my role as a Technology Solutions Architect for Cisco. I should note that this site is my personal site and does not reflect the views of Cisco.
Feel free to drop me a note if you find this site useful or if you'd like for me to check out your blog. I can be reached at catherine.liao@gmail.com. You can also connect with me via LinkedIn or Twitter.
Looking for less "geeky" content? Check out my travel blog 1-Day Itinerary.