Back-End Solutions to Having a Quick Load-Time

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There’s a long list of best practices for making your website load quickly. If you’re a design/interactive marketing agency, this is especially important. Often times you don’t have maybe have your actual website loading quickly, but other things are preventing it from being quick and snappy.

A lot of these things have to do with your website and include cleaning up your code, making sure you don’t create any wasted database queries, and creating web friendly images and content. As important as these things are, they’ll only take you so far. You’ll fight half of this immensely important battle on the back-end of your server. Here are some important back-end solutions to having a quick load-time.

Make Sure You’re on an Up to Date Server

Like the vast majority of people, you’re on a shared hosting server, you may not have a server that’s been updated recently. The main reason is that these updates create down time and take up workers’ time at your hosting company. This process also can potentially lead to unpredictable errors, and thus, more down time and more workers’ hours. Check with your hosting group to be certain that you’re up to date. If you’re not, either request a move to an up to date server or ask for an update to your own. Whether it’s your hosting, PHP databases, or hosted exchange services, having the most up to date server software will help speed up your processes.

Switch to a Better Server

This doesn’t necessarily mean switching hosting companies. After all, your relationship with that company is generally a long term relationship, and switching hosts can be an entirely painful process. However, many hosts will take care of a lot of the details for you, if you choose to upgrade to one of their better servers. This can simply mean a faster server at the same cost–changing from a shared to a virtual dedicated server or a fully dedicated server. This can have a dramatic impact on your load times. Dedicated servers load ridiculously fast, so long as you’re willing to pay for it.

Switch to Cloud Computing

Public cloud servers run in a more efficient and effective way that’s perfect for anyone who’s going to be using on-server software, large databases, or other more expansive web based applications. Since they function on a “pay as you go” pricing model, the cost is frequently much lower than the price of a dedicated server, while giving you the speed that you need.

Get a Server Manager

If you have a virtual dedicated server or a fully dedicated server, having the right configurations and up to date server software and databases will generally be your responsibility. Having a manager in charge of these aspects of your server can dramatically increase the overall performance. Management teams and groups are often available for hire from hosting companies. While not exactly cheap, this approach is generally much less expensive than having someone in house do this job for you.

While all of these back-end strategies are important, don’t ignore your front end. After all, statistics show that 80 percent of your site load time comes from the front end content.

Image Credit: Server Room Powerstrips

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Comments

  1. There always seems to bit a lot of confusion with people when they first start up with their own websites with regards to Shared Hosting and a Dedicated Server.

    Thanks for the great advice and easy to understand write up, hopefully this will help out those new and accustomed to running their own website 😉

  2. Thanks for stopping by Karen, this is site is on shared, but once the traffic gets a little higher, I will be moving it over to dedicated server or a buisness class shared…

    I think most sites can start on shared, and then if the site takes off, then should upgrade accordingly.

  3. Selena. I definitely agree with going with a dedicated server, and to check out your response times (via ping) to that server before you purchase.

    Adding web server configurations that include gzipping and caching certain items for long periods of time can really help loading times as well.

    • Aaron, I usually recommend dedicated for most businesses, since they have more options and they are more secure than shared.

      After getting everything update to date and adding gzipping and caching, I can see the server response time being faster…

  4. Selena, I never thought of checking whether the hosting server is up to date on all level. That’s a very good point, because I agree that a high percentage of those downtimes are due to server upgrades.

    • Omer, I never thought of doing that as well. Once its time start looking at moving to a dedicated server, I will have to keep that in mind. I always thought they would have the latest builds and update on every part of the backend hardware.

Trackbacks

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Selena Narayanasamy, Element321. Element321 said: New Blog Post: Guest Post by Selena Narayanasamy @Esvienne: Back-End Solutions to Having a Quick Load-Time http://bt.io/FTSd […]

  2. Back-End Tips to Help Speed Up Your Website…

    If you already modified the code and modified the code side of your site to load faster, then you need to work on the back-end side of your site….

  3. Story added…

    Your story was featured in Featured in MMO Social Network! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://www.mmosocialnetwork.com/Hosting/Speed_Up_Your_Website_Through_Server_Upgrades

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