This document provides tips on how to optimize a Drupal site for speed. It recommends using more powerful hardware, configuring the web server with Nginx for static files and caching, using a database server like PerconaDB for performance, optimizing PHP with FPM and opcodes, improving Drupal with caching and removing slow modules, optimizing themes to minimize processing, using a faster search like Solr, and optimizing frontend assets with aggregation, compression and CDNs. The overall goal is to leverage caching, databases, servers and other techniques to make a Drupal site faster.

1. Optimize Drupal
Make your Drupal site faster
Sunday, May 12, 13

2. Lê Thanh Sang
• http://drupal.org/user/204321
• Skype: mr.lamphong
• Module Development
• 5 years with Drupal
Sunday, May 12, 13

3. Agenda
• Hardware
• WebServer
• Drupal
• FrontEnd
• Monitor
Sunday, May 12, 13

4. Hardware
• Many CPU as possible
• Faster disk IO as possible (Sata < SAS <
SSD < PCI Flash)
Sunday, May 12, 13

5. Web Server
• Reverse Proxy
• Nginx for static file
• Percona Database server
• PHP-FPM + Opcode (APC, Xcache,
eAccelerator)
• Redis or Memcache
Sunday, May 12, 13

6. Web Server - Reverse
Proxy
• Use nginx or varnish
• Cache content on RAM (Create a mount
point using tmpfs)
• Allow flush cache on Internal IP. Use purge
module on Drupal.
Sunday, May 12, 13

7. Web Server
• Using nginx if you can.Apache is fine, use
Reverse Proxy for faster.
• Using mod_pagespeed (http://
code.google.com/p/modpagespeed/)
• For nginx: https://github.com/pagespeed/
ngx_pagespeed
Sunday, May 12, 13

8. Database Server
• PerconaDB or MariaDB
• Don’t use same server with Drupal if you
can.
• Use master for write
• Slave replication for read
Sunday, May 12, 13

9. PHP-FPM
• Running via socket (faster than TCP/IP)
• Only install extension we need
• Set max_request
• Turn off log for production
Sunday, May 12, 13

10. Drupal
• Use Pressflow (Require PHP 5)
• Block cache
• Redis cache
• Authenticated cache
• Remove slow module (Statistics,
admin_menu, tagadelic, nice menus)
• Using xdebug or xhprof for profiling
Sunday, May 12, 13

11. Drupal theme
• Never use a function in the tpl file, always
on the preprocess function
• In tpl only print variables
• Only use hook_theme (theme, process,
preprocess)
Sunday, May 12, 13

12. Drupal search
• Don’t use default DB search
• Solr or Elastic Search
Sunday, May 12, 13

13. FrontEnd
• Browser can send 4~6 request per domain
(2 for IE).
• CSS/JS aggregation
• CDN, Gzip compression, sprites, image
optimization (Done if using
mog_pagespeed)
Sunday, May 12, 13

14. Summary
Upgrade your hardware is alway a best solution
Sunday, May 12, 13

15. Question?
Lê Thanh Sang
me@sanglt.com
Sunday, May 12, 13