Page Caching - Speed Up Joomla Website

Joomla is a popular web content management systemsince their last visit. This setting affects caching of
used for various types of websites, from smallindividual modules and component views. Each time
homepages to medium size corporate pages. Joomlasome part of the website is rendered it is also saved
is free open-source script based on PHP language.to a file for later reuse. This file is kept for the time
This means that there are no static HTML pages,specified in cache settings, default value is 15 minutes.
each page has to be rendered from the data in theFor each module you have also individual setting
MySQL database, template and various extensions.regarding caching. You can either use the the global
This makes it very flexible.website setting or switch off caching of particular
However, this approach has one big drawback. Themodule. Polls, rotating banners and highly dynamic
rendering takes tame. Every time the page iscontent should not be cached.
requested, Joomla has to create it from scratch. ForThe second setting is a system cache plugin. If
each request there are a lot of database queries, fileenabled, this plugin caches whole pages. Here you can
reads and scripts processed. Depending on serveralso define the time after which cached pages will
load the page creation process can slow down loadingexpire. This setting can significantly increase website
in browser which can lead to bad user experience.performance since each page will be rendered only
Pages that load slowly are not visited frequently. Asonce during the lifetime of the cache file. However, if
soon as the page does not load in expected time,the content of your pages is dynamic and changes
users navigate to the next website.from one visitor to another, then you will probably have
The simplest way to speed up Joomla websites is toto disable this type of caching.
use caching. This is a process for storing createdThere is also an additional global setting for faster data
pages to files which are loaded on next requests fortransfer: GZIP page compression. If enabled, each
the same page. Caching significantly reduces time topage is compressed before it is sent to the browser.
load pages. There are two settings for caching inThis is an additional improvement for faster loading.
Joomla. One in global configuration and one as aJoomla provides many nice and fancy features.
cache plugin.Unfortunately, each additional element increases page
The main cache setting is on the global configurationcreation time. Joomla caching options can significantly
page. Here you can enable it and set cache time. Thisreduce page loading times and contribute to better
time is important because it also defines the time afteruser experience.
which users will get new content if it has changed