If your Magento site is hosted with a shared web hosting service, it can result in slowing down of your site. If your web pages are not fast enough for the browsers, they may leave your site without any hesitation. To avoid this you should ensure that your site works fast enough for your customers. There are several ways to test the speed of your website. If you search online you can find several tools and sites that allow the users to check the actual speed of their website. Once you get a proper idea about the extent of change you need you can start with some corrective measures.
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Enable Caching
Go to the admin panel of your Magento website. In the admin panel you will be having a set of menus. From the menus select the System menu. Under System menu you will be able to find the option of Cache Management. There are several settings available in this page. Primarily, you should enable caching for different parameters. You will be able to find several options in this page. You should select each of these options and under the Action menu choose the option “Enable”. This would enable the caching process. However, after making the changes, you should refresh your cache. This would make your magento faster for your browsers.
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Cleaning Database
The log tables of your Magento website can affect the speed of your website. These log tables get overpopulated and they make your Magento database quite heavy. This can make your site quite sluggish and slow. If your site is fairly new, then your database may not require a cleaning. But if the site has been witnessing too many activities it would require a cleanup after a period of 1 or 2 months. In order to clean the database, you should go to its System menu. Under the System menu select Configuration. Select the option of Log cleaning and you will be able to see different options. Select the answer “Yes” against the option of “Enable log cleaning”. Similarly, set 15 days against the option of “Save Log Days”.
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Fooman Speedster
Magento has introduced several extensions for their clients. These extensions can help you in optimizing the activity of your website. Fooman Speedster is specially made to improve the speed of Magento websites. This application caches and compresses CSS files and JavaScript. You can get information about this extension in their official website of Magentocommerce. However, before you download and install this application you should ensure whether the version of your Magento is fully compatible with it. If you are unfamiliar with this niche, you can consult a web developer who can help you with this extension.
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Site Optimization
You should optimize your website and its pages to make things lighter for your visitors. You should check the size of the files you upload to your site and try to avoid files that are too heavy. You should use file formats that are compatible with your Magento version. Do not post images that are too big. Similarly, do not include too many graphics that are unnecessary. Do not make the navigation too complex. It would be easier for your visitors to browse through your site if the navigation system is simple. Similarly, you should disable ETags for your site. For more information refer to goivvy.com
