Web Performance for
LAMP developers
Sergey Chernyshev
@SergeyChe

Performance? Why?
User experience
$$$ Money $$$
• Shopzilla +7-12% conversions!
& -50% operation costs
• +15% (+60M) downloads for Firefox.
(-1sec => +2.7% downloads)
• Slowness is sticky (Google and Microsoft)
SEO: Google uses site's speed in ranking

"Front-end"
• Read waterfall diagrams
• Measure user's version of performance
• Use browser's cache
• "Compile" your web apps

Water
falls

Metrics
• TTFB
• Time to load
• Time to first render
• Above the Fold (AFT)
• Your business metrics
• Technical metrics (# of requests, page size, etc)

Quick wins!
gzip
(Apache configuration)
Browser Caching
(Apache & PHP code)

gzip
reduction of download time
~75% for text-based
~37% total

Use Browser Cache
Know your last update
No download time is spent

Use Browser Cache
Never expire specific URL
Use update time as fingerprint

Compile
• Combine CSS and JavaScript
• Minify CSS, JavaScript and even HTML
• Optimize images
• Version static / code URLs

Drop-in .htaccess

Trends
Track your metrics over time