The second most popular CMS in the world, Joomla is often used by online magazines, small businesses, corporations, and various other websites. With multi-language support, easy community management, clean and organized extensions directory, and built-in caching options Joomla still stands as a very good competitor to WordPress. In order to ensure the best possible experience for your visitors and running a fast and responsive website, you need the right tools for the job. So, let’s go through the best Joomla extensions you can use to increase the performance of your website.
Before digging into specifics, none of this will matter without the right hosting provider and a solid foundation for every website. Depending on your website type and specific needs that you have, your provider should offer flexible plans that can adjust and grow along with your website. There are some good reviews and expert opinions that you can find useful when picking the provider that will tick all the boxes that your website needs. Since hosting providers can make or break your website, take your time, and go over all the important options in order to make the optimal choice.
10 Performance Boosting Joomla Extensions
JCH Optimize
One of the favorite extensions of every Joomla webmaster is JCH Optimize which provides several front-end optimizations for faster download speeds for your website. This extension will combine your CSS and javascript files and background images into a sprite to reduce HTTP requests. With a couple of different techniques like compressing files with Gzip and removing unnecessary whitespaces and characters from CSS and Javascript files and the HTML pages, JCH Optimize will also reduce your page size and boost your page speed.
Route 66
One of the all-in-one extensions, Route 66 combines SEO optimization with Google Lighthouse/PageSpeed boost and ease of use. Route 66 can improve your SEO and website speed in order for your website to achieve a high score at Google Lighthouse/PageSpeed by following all recommendations that are required to make your website ranked higher by Google. Yoast SEO engine is used for analyzing website content and providing suggestions for improvement, while different techniques are applied to lazy load images and iframes, making your website fast and snappy.
Cache Cleaner
If you are using caching in Joomla (and you most likely are), clearing your cache after making changes to your website is a must. Cache cleaner simplifies this task and allows you to do everything you need in just one click, without the need to reload the page. Advanced options allow you to clear server, Cloudflare and CDN cache, and even 3rd party cache. If you want you can also do a Global Check-in, empty the tmp folder, and user-defined folders and database tables from one place with just one click, thus improving the performance of your website.
JotCache
Another advanced caching plugin that can improve the performance of your website relies on a management component that covers tailored processing in JotCache for all types of extensions: static and dynamic modules as well as components with static content and dynamic forms. JotCache plugin is replacing the standard caching plugin and adding a lot of enhancements like cache management with a faster opening on larger websites, crawlers and cookies exclusion, selective use of browser cache for chosen page URI’s, use of Memcached server as cache storage, powerful auto clean, batch recaching on front-end pages and a lot more.
jQuery Easy
With this plug-in, you can easily remove jQuery conflicts when your website becomes overloaded with javascript libraries. Out-of-the-box functionalities cover calling jQuery and jQuery UI libraries from the Google CDN, placing jQuery libraries after MooTools calls for perfect compatibility, and adding the noConflict() code alongside the jQuery library call. Advanced functions allow you to disable MooTools libraries tentatively in the frontend and enable or disable the plugin in specific portions of the site, from template to single page… By limiting the server load, your pages will be faster and more responsive.
Optimus
By targeting lossless compression of PNG and JPEG images Optimus compresses the images while maintaining high image quality. This extension will not only slim down the original image but all preview images (thumbnails). It will also remove unnecessary metadata that is not useful for displaying images in the browser. With all the optimization Optimus can make up to 70% size reductions while maintaining similar image quality, which can have a huge impact on image-heavy websites. Reduced image size will minimize the traffic quantity thanks to smaller images, and page loading times will be greatly improved.
Javascript Async and Defer
As the name says, this plugin is allowing the asynchronous loading of javascript and improving your page loading time by doing so. This basically means that when the browser loads a page external javascript and CSS resources will be loaded before loading HTML and rendering its content, which will directly improve page loading time.
ScriptsDown
ScriptsDown is one more, a self-explanatory extension that can boost YSlow and PageSpeed scores by moving Javascript files to the bottom of your page, just before the closing body tag. You will need to keep in mind that some websites cannot function without javascript in the head, in which case ScriptsDown will not be able to speed up your web page(s).
CDN for Joomla
If you are using Content Delivery Network, one of the plugins that you must not forget is CDN for Joomla. The basic idea of this extension is to provide easy integration with a CDN. The direct benefits of using Content Delivery Networks are faster page loads, reduced server load, better SEO rankings, and the ability to handle more visitors. With collaboration with most popular Content Delivery Networks, CDN for Joomla works great with MaxCDN, Amazon CloudFront, CDN77, CDNetworks, CDNify, CacheFly, EdgeCast Networks, and KeyCDN.
LLFJ – Lazy Load for Joomla
Last, but not least, LLFJ allows image loading when a visitor scrolls to them, not before. This will save you server bandwidth and users will never have to load images that they will not see. An increase in the loading speed is the obvious benefit that will impact your website in many ways. LLFJ includes two different scripts – for jQuery and Mootools, and you can set a threshold for image preloading within a specific range in pixels.
The Need for Speed
Speed is one of the main things that you have to worry about if you want your website to be successful, and with these 10 plugins, you don’t need to worry about getting the best optimization for your website. But fear not, Joomla extensions are not only about speed, they are made to improve every aspect of website functionality, so make sure you pick the right ones and make the best of your website. And remember, these extensions are made to make your life easier, so use them and make your website stand out from the crowd.
