Understanding how to improve Time to First Byte (TTFB) elgg1.8
By lord55
Increasing Speed, Reducing Time to First Byte is one of reason to take care for elgg and It is a motive because elgg goes slow. Basically the advice is moving to a better/faster server that because time to first byte is the time it takes the server to start sending the data.
So we can think to reduce TTFB following these advices:
- Move your website to a faster/better server
- Use a CDN or something similar to reduce the load on the server (repeated requests to a server will increase the TTFB)
- Reduce the time the server spends processing the request for information.
But a lot of us are not really prepared to move servers, and change the way our server worked and in any case a lot of us use a hosted server so no control on them.
So what can we do?
- Reduce System_Log: Find if your system_log table is too big and reducing it can be an advice. TTFB depends on how many big is our database so plugins like logrotate and garbagecollector can be very useful but they need a little more support to install and configure it. I saw the time to first byte on the first call on a simple index has gone from 1,2s or more to 600/800ms. It is still a lot time. A good site must have a TTFB around 250ms.
So I want to invite all you to do a test and report your data here like below using http://www.webpagetest.org :
| Load Time | First Byte | Start Render | DOM Elements | Time | Requests | Bytes In | Time | Requests | Bytes In |
|---|
Mysite - on server host -
| index | 2.851s | 0.717s | 2.458s | 176 | 2.851s | 13 | 175 KB | 3.826s | 13 | 175 KB |
| blog/all | 3.512s | 1.180s | 2.931s | 628 | 3.512s | 16 | 180 KB | 4.436s | 16 | 180 KB |
| bookmark/all | 3.918s | 1.348s | 3.103s | 724 | 3.918s | 14 | 178 KB | 4.718s | 14 | 178 KB |
| groups/all | 4.448s | 1.119s | 2.808s | 389 | 4.448s | 24 | 189 KB | 4.448s | 24 | 189 KB |
| members/all | 3.191s | 0.995s | 2.695s | 340 | 3.191s | 13 | 173 KB | 3.974s | 13 | 173 KB |
as you can see my TTFB has always an F score, this is very very bad and the server host is a medium quality like dreamhost.
Italian Community Group
Gruppo per utenti italiani.
- ghumanz@harinderghumanz
ghumanz - 0 likes
Load Time First Byte Start Render DOM Elements Time Requests Bytes In Time Requests Bytes In First View
8.806s
1.663s
2.953s
576
8.806s
51
410 KB
15.541s
87
537 KB
Repeat View
2.314s
1.323s
1.406s
576
2.314s
7
15 KB
3.234s
12
29 KB
- ghumanz@harinderghumanz
ghumanz - 0 likes
-
-
-
-
-
- ghumanz@harinderghumanz
ghumanz - 0 likes
- ghumanz@harinderghumanz
ghumanz - 0 likes
- lord55@lord55
lord55 - 0 likes
- ghumanz@harinderghumanz
ghumanz - 0 likes
You must log in to post replies.Here are mine:- I am on vps with 1 gb ram
F
First Byte Time
A
Keep-alive EnabledA
Compress TextA
Compress ImagesB
Cache static contentX
CDN detectedPage Speed 1.9 Score: 92/100*
Actually it is depend upon number of quries, my rest of all pages are 80% less then my index page.
a good target for elgg will be to have TTFB at 500ms. Memcache can help too.
Yes Lord your are right, I think elgg need a plugin like w3 total cache same as word press. I have another blog in word press and without super cache or total cahce all blogs are very slow in wordpress. But after installing total cache everything looks optimized like, html, js, css and TTFB.
Some time before you combined all js I am using same script in my site and it help me lot, I tried lot of times to go with default anf it increase a loading time .