34 Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

• Minimize HTTP Requests
• Use a Content Delivery Network
• Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
• Gzip Components
• Put Stylesheets at the Top
• Put Scripts at the Bottom
• Avoid CSS Expressions
• Make JavaScript and CSS External
• Reduce DNS Lookups
• Minify JavaScript and CSS
• Avoid Redirects
• Remove Duplicate Scripts
• Configure ETags
• Make Ajax Cacheable
• Flush the Buffer Early
• Use GET for AJAX Requests
• Post-load Components
• Preload Components
• Reduce the Number of DOM Elements
• Split Components Across Domains
• Minimize the Number of iframes
• No 404s
• Reduce Cookie Size
• Use Cookie-free Domains for Components
• Minimize DOM Access
• Develop Smart Event Handlers
• Choose <link> over @import
• Avoid Filters
• Optimize Images
• Optimize CSS Sprites
• Don’t Scale Images in HTML
• Make favicon.ico Small and Cacheable
• Keep Components under 25K
• Pack Components into a Multipart Document