Essential addons for performance

[Amin Sabet]

I saw you wanted more caching from BD Cache btw, you can do what you want with CloudFlare.
Create a page rule for domain.com* and set to cache everything.
Create another rule for domain.com/data/avatars/* and set to basic caching.

I'm going to try uninstalling bd cache and doing more with CloudFlare.

Btw, CloudFlare is caching my avatars without any page rules.

 

[m1ne]

Cloudflare is caching my avatars without any page rules.

You're ignoring query strings?

 

[Amin Sabet]

You're ignoring query strings?

My caching level is set to "Standard".

 

[rdn]

I guess make a page rule for that too.

and that's not possible on Cloudflare.

 

[Amin Sabet]

While we're talking performance, should I switch from LiteSpeed Webserver to Apache or Nginx just so I can use the Page Speed module, or is it not worth it? The cost of LSWS is not an issue for me.

 

[rafass]

So what are the main or most important rules that must be set in cloudflare?

 

[Amin Sabet]

So what are the main or most important rules that must be set in cloudflare?

These are mine now that I added one from @RoldanLT :

 

[m1ne]

Rocket Loader is awesome if you manually add the tag. It doesn't play nice otherwise.

 

[jauburn]

My site's pretty darn fast without any of this stuff. I try to keep the number of add-ons down. Every time I add a new one, I have an additional nagging maintenance worry.

I think a lot of the speed of the site is down to the host and the equipment it uses. Don't you agree? I've been quite happy with Knownhost--probably happier than I've been with any host over the past 20 years.

 

[rafass]

My site's pretty darn fast without any of this stuff. I try to keep the number of add-ons down. [...].
I think a lot of the speed of the site is down to the host and the equipment it uses. Don't you agree? [...].

That's very true.
but your site can be even faster with some improvements.
Don't you like the Speed?

Spoiler: Latest Performance Report for: http://poetrycircle.com/forum/ - Report generated: Wed, Oct 28, 2015

With some tweaks here and there XF can get 99% - 99%.

 

[Glockie]

Hmm I tried using that to check ours, 403 error Forbidden..
Ours needs speeding up definitely. I'm hoping that moving from a DO droplet to a fully fledged dedi will help.
Add-ons to tend to slow things down, that's certain. The faster the better.

 

[jauburn]

Don't you like the Speed?

Sure. But I also like simplicity. Add-ons complicate things.

Plus none of my users is complaining about site performance. Nor am I.

I've learned through years of doing this crazy stuff that less is more (as it often is in life in general).

 

[Amin Sabet]

Sure. But I also like simplicity. Add-ons complicate things.

Plus none of my users is complaining about site performance. Nor am I.

I've learned through years of doing this crazy stuff that less is more (as it often is in life in general).

At least half the time I make a add something to improve performance, I end up removing it later, so I know where you are coming from. Some notable examples:

LiteSpeed - I recently found that my sites were just as fast without it

CDNs in general have brought me nothing but pain

Deferring javascript has not been worth the headaches

Lazy loading images is a work in progress

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The single most effective thing I've done to speed up my sites, besides having a good server and host, was to get rid of poorly written, poorly performing ad networks and to minimize ad passbacks. I wish I could get rid of ads completely, but then I couldn't afford that server.

 

[m1ne]

I don't display ads on the homepage/landing page for 2 reasons, 1: it looks much nicer without them and 2: initial loading time is half a second faster