Check your version
This tutorial covers a topic in Drupal 7 which may or may not be the version you're using. We're keeping this tutorial online as a courtesy to users of Drupal 7, but we consider it archived.
Configure basic settings which affect performance, and perform basic analysis to understand what might be affecting website performance.
Goal
Analyze your site's performance.
Prerequisites
You will need the following knowledge and skills. If you need a review, check out the Additional resources section at the bottom of this page.
- Understand the areas of Drupal that can be configured for performance.
- Analyze the performance of a page request.
- Understand the software stack that can help address performance issues.
Tasks
Configure system settings to improve performance within the admin system.
Display active queries using the Devel module to identify any slow queries.
Use the YSlow plugin in Chrome to analyze the performance of your website.
Recap
- A wide range of factors can affect performance.
- System settings should be systematically checked to see ensure performance is optimal.
- Additional layers of caching such as Varnish and Nginx are often used to serve content.
- Delivery of CSS and JavaScript can affect page rendering time and should also be analyzed.
Further your understanding
- Continue to the next lesson: Movie Project: Create Database Tables and Alter Forms.
Additional resources
- Documentation: Managing site performance and scalability (Drupal.org)
- Video: An Overview of the Devel Module (Drupalize.Me)
- YSlow
