We don't want to pay too much for hosting service but we do wish high performance on website. Looks crazy but how can we get such deal? We have done a bit research and compiled the following 9 tips on how to host a high performance website with a cheap hosting service.
It's not a secret your server is being oversold because you pay just one or two bucks per month. The hosting company has to be profitable from their low cost plan. Most of the time we can't rely on hosting support to optimize on server end. Instead, we have to apply necessary changes on our website and make use of existing service to speed up our websites.
Use static page
It doesn't mean we can't host dynamic website via cheap hosting. It requires us to convert our web pages to static one so as to reduce read/write to webserver and database. If we work with cms softwares, there're always various modules/plugins to automate this process. If it's programmed by web developer, we should submit the idea so they can follow up properly. Normally, static web page responses 3 times faster more than dynamic.
Use cache
The purpose is to keep a cache of your website properties from server or local computer. Nest time when the same person browse to our site again, the browser doesn't have to download everything from scratch from hosting space so page speed is greatly improved. Cache plugin is popularly used for some leading cms softwares such as wordpress. For example the W3TotalCache developer guarantees 10 times faster after used the solution.
Css optimization
There're two points about CSS optimization, Coding and compression. On coding level, we need to check carefully about different declarations, especially those duplicated declaration such as the following:
h1 { color: black; }
p { color: black; }
We can combine the two lines to a single one as h1, p { color: black; } so when there's http requests it will reduce the calling time.
As about compression, it means to remove blank space in css file as much as possible and reduce the overall file size. Especially for those big css files, it's great help. We can seek help from existing tools like www.csscompressor.com. But we should use it carefully because it might cause problems in same case.
Js file optimization
Js is used by almost every website and some sites are heavily js based. In order to optimize such file, we can consider in following ways:
Quote from existing js base. There're lots of js libraries and many files are used in common. We don't have to upload every js file to hosting space. Instead, we can call it directly from online base such as Google library
Compress js file size. You should consider to compress it if it's big size. There're lots of online toos to do the work.
Put less important js files to page bottom. Because page header is always firstly loaded when http request occurs, loading speed can be improved a lot if we put less important js files to page bottom.
Picture optimization
Pictures always take lots of space and takes longer to load. When there's bad internet or server connection, we should try to reduce its size as much as possible. We don't recommend to upload pictures directly from our camera because it's really big. We should reduce its size first before uploading, there're lots of tools to use such as photoshop or any other resize solutions.
Delayed page loading
It should be used when there're long pages. Delayed page loading technique will just load the first screen for fast displaying. Rest contents will be loaded when you scroll down the page. It's extremely useful for those pictures based sites. If you created the site via wordpress, we highly recommend using WP images lazy loading plugin. There're also lots of jquery guidance on how to realize this function, just do your research if you program by yourself.
Enable gzip
Gzip is a server process that essentially compresses your files on the fly before transmission to the user. It should be enabled by default. But in case it's not enabled, we can manually activate this function via htaccess. Just put the following code to your htaccess in website root
#Gzip
<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript text/javascript
</ifmodule>
#End Gzip
Use cdn service
Using CDN will greatly speed up your site loading. Because cdn will delivery website files to different networks so when user send http requests to website, it will be downloaded from the most nearby network nodes. The most populary and widely used cdn service cloudflare is highly recommended because their free plan is good enough for personal sites.
Testing
Testing all your work and check if there's anything to be improved. Here we highly suggest Pagespeed insights which is provided by google. It's an online tool that will analyze your page and provide properiate suggestions. If you use firefox explorer, there's a great plugin called "firebug" which helps your web page optimization on the fly. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Your website should get much better loading response after all above optimization. It's not so easy to work with a cheap hosting service, so you should evaluate seriously if you really have to use it. If you need a high performance server directly, we suggest check out a reputable shared or business web hosting plan.
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