Faster Joomla

I didn't realize that installing so many components and modules would have such an impact on the website's loading time until it was too late. But, after working for an hour on the same, the website loads not at lightning speed but i can say its decent.

This is a list of things i did to improve the speed of my website...

1. Removed all unnecessary components, modules and plugins. I have kept only those which i really need and the count is not more than 5 to 7 for all three of them.
2. Enabled Gzip compression in global configuration of my joomla-powered website.
3. Enabled caching in global configuration of website and set the caching time to 600 minutes. Foot-in-mouth, I know its 10 hours but this is just a personal blog which doesn't change often. (Thanks to my work schedule for keeping me so busy!!)
4. Changed my theme. Earlier, i had a rocket theme full of graphics, animation, flash and other scripts which took a lot of time to load. At first, it looked cool to have such a hi-fi theme but seriously, its a waste compromising on speed just to get some beautiful effects. (The site still looks pleasant. Doesn't it ?)
5. Removed some useless tables I created while experimenting by installing hundreds of modules and plugins, and many extensions which developers don't even care to drop during uninstalling.. Yell...!!
6. Ran a query on my MySQL database to optimize the tables.   

OPTIMIZE TABLE `jos_banner` , `jos_bannerclient` , `jos_bannertrack` ,  `jos_categories` , `jos_components` , `jos_contact_details` ,  `jos_content` , `jos_content_frontpage` , `jos_content_rating` ,  `jos_core_acl_aro` , `jos_core_acl_aro_groups` , `jos_core_acl_aro_map` ,  `jos_core_acl_aro_sections` , `jos_core_acl_groups_aro_map` ,  `jos_core_log_items` , `jos_core_log_searches` , `jos_groups` ,  `jos_menu` , `jos_menu_types` , `jos_messages` , `jos_messages_cfg` ,  `jos_modules` , `jos_modules_menu` , `jos_newsfeeds` , `jos_plugins` ,  `jos_polls` , `jos_poll_data` , `jos_poll_date` , `jos_poll_menu` ,  `jos_sections` , `jos_session` , `jos_stats_agents` ,  `jos_templates_menu` , `jos_users` , `jos_weblinks`

Credits: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=503&t=277407

I think that's all i did.  Umm...I actually did few other things too!. But, as  i told you, i am going to keep this list short ( It does include all the key points).

If you want to read more:
http://www.joomspot.net/how-to-speed-up-optimize-joomlas-performance.html
http://www.joomlaperformance.com/articles/performance/so_you_want_to_spe...
http://seo4joomla.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/how-to-speed-up-your-joomla-s...

 
So now, i am really happy with the performance. I do realize there's a lot more that can be done to make it much better :)

Performance is your reality. Forget everything else!