Joomla!® Bible

Chapter 26. Managing Performance and Accessibility

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding cache management

• Improving content performance

• Tuning Joomla! performance

• Enhancing accessibility

The performance and accessibility of your site should be common concerns for all web site owners. This chapter looks at how Joomla! can be optimized for better performance and how the accessibility can be improved through good management of templates and content items.

Although it may initially appear that no positive relationship between performance tuning and web site accessibility exists, the opposite is true. Many of the items that improve the performance of a Web site are also consistent with improving the accessibility of a Web site. Indeed, the bells and whistles that many site owners include in their sites can limit both the site's performance and its accessibility.

Understanding Cache Management

Cache files are temporary files created and stored on the server that help to cut down on server load and improve performance times. When a file is cached, the server can display the cached value instead of going through the effort of calling up the information from out of the database and assembling it for display. When site traffic is heavy, the efficiency gained through caching can result in dramatic performance improvements.

Joomla! supports both global site caching and the ability to control caching for individual modules. You can also set the length of the time things are cached, which tells the system how ...