Yahoo’s Exceptional Performance team has compiled a list of 34 best practices to have faster web pages. In this post I’ll show you 8 tips which helped me to get a B grade in YSlow! for web pages that I develop. Currently YSlow’s web page analysis is based on 13 identified basic rules that affect web page performance. In decreasing order of priority they are:
- Make Fewer HTTP Requests
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Add an Expires Header
- Gzip Components
- Put CSS at the Top
- Move Scripts to the Bottom
- Avoid CSS Expressions
- Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Reduce DNS Lookups
- Minify JavaScript
- Avoid Redirects
- Remove Duplicate Scripts
- Configure ETags
You can get more info by clicking on each item. Of course using a CDN is not affordable by everybody, including me. This didn’t prevent me to have a B grade though. I will guide you through some of the items which worked for me.
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