We all want our Drupal sites to run faster. The need for speed only continues to increase as does the rapid growth of mobile users and the ever-expanding amount of rich content on the web. For many of us, Drupal is at the center – serving up our content to users who expect pages to load FAST. But despite its power, Drupal can be a performance bottleneck. For large projects, the solution may be as simple as provisioning additional hosting resources: more memory, additional server instances, load balancers, etc. However, increased server resources can come at a significant cost, which may not be an option for projects that are constrained by limited budgets.

In this session, we'll outline the spectrum of options for improving the speed of your Drupal site… on a budget. We'll begin with the premise that there are actually many things you can do to significantly improve the overall speed of your site without spending a lot of time or money.

Studies show that nearly half of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and that even a 1 second delay can contribute to an increased bounce rate and a decreased conversion rate. So, let's get that 1 second back!

INTENDED AUDIENCE: This session is perfect for those who want an overview of Drupal site optimization best practices and basics. Ideal for beginners or for established developers who want a sanity check. This will not be a deep dive into advanced Web Performance Optimization; there are many excellent talks and resources on that. Instead, we'll examine some often overlooked enhancements that can add up to significant speed-ups – with specific focus on free tools and techniques that can be implemented with relative ease and for little to no cost. At the end of the session, we'll share a checklist that you can use to assess your site.

Note: This session was originally presented at Drupaldelphia 2013 and has been expanded and updated. Many of the concepts in this presentation can also be applied to WordPress sites.

About the Speaker

Dave Sawyer is a Solutions Architect at OHO Interactive - a proud sponsor of NERD SUMMIT 2014. He has 15 years experience in web development and specializes in architecting multi-site solutions. Dave is an Acquia Certified Developer and works extensively with Drupal. He has given talks at numerous Drupal conferences and camps including DrupalCon Austin, Drupaldelphia, and DrupalCamp New Jersey. Previously, Dave has worked as a consultant and developer for Adobe Systems, Bloomsbury Publishing, and The Vineyard Gazette. You can follow him on Twitter at @cmsdave.