Let's face it, building a website in 2024 on one hand is easier and easier than it has ever been ... especially with solutions like Joomla 5... but on the other, once you have built your beautiful website, it is harder than ever to get noticed, to get quality traffic and to convert visitors into customers... 

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One significant way to help yourself get your website noticed, be more inclusive, and to convert better is to optimize your site but in 2024, optimisation isn't just about using a quality open source CMS like Joomla, or adding a Meta description here and there - it is about a whole many things.

To get started, let's look what Optimize means: to render optimal, to make as good as possible; to make the best or most effective use of.

In this series, I will attempt to demystify and answer to that definition. I will also try to be comprehensive and not forget too many things along the way. We will look at all of the different areas which (in my opinion) a modern Joomla 5 website should be from a global optimization perspective. It is about seeing the entire website from a holistic point of view and understanding that optimization is greater than the sum of its parts.

To try to make things organised, I will break down the series into Chapters:

CHAPTER 1: HOSTING AS A FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 2: THE CMS 
CHAPTER 3: TO FRAMEWORK OR NOT TO FRAMEWORK
CHAPTER 4: CONTENT IS KING
CHAPTER 5: DON'T FORGET SEO
CHAPTER 6: IT'S ALL ABOUT USER EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 7: ACCESSIBILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL
CHAPTER 8: ECO-FRIENDLINESS FOR ONE PLANET
CHAPTER 9: USEFUL OPTIMIZATION TIDBITS

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CHAPTER 1 - HOSTING AS A FOUNDATION

While it may be obvious to some, I seem to often find customers or people involved in web design that do not understand or consider the importance of quality hosting as the foundation onto which their website is built... It is for sure an important part (and can be a critical part depending on the website) of making sure that one's website runs smoothly, and can be fully optimized to fulfill its purpose whether it be converting a customer to purchase or to give a great impression on a service or product you are promoting...

Here are things to consider in terms of quality hosting in 2024:

 • Hosting type and location - (see section below about the different types of hosting) 
 • Modern Hardware for optimal performance
 • Enjoy RAM, disk space and bandwidth for your website's current and future needs
 • Support for at least PHP 8.2 and newer, MySQL 8.0 and newer or MariaDB 11.0 minimum* (and server software that is kept up-to-date)
 
Whether you are on Shared hosting or a VPS environment or greater, of course, having fast processors and enough cores, adequate RAM, and storage to handle your website’s traffic and data is vital.

The Different Types of Hosting:

Type of Hosting	Pros	Cons	Performance	Price
Shared	Price, a lot of offers	Limited Control	Poor to Acceptable	$ to $$
VPS (Virtual Private Server)	Performance, Flexibility	Price, a bit more Knowledge required	Good to Great	$$ to $$$
Dedicated Server	Performance, Full Control	Price, Required Knowledge	Great to Best	$$ to $$$$
Colocation	Hardware Control	Hardware Investment Complexity	Great to Best	$$$ to $$$$
Cloud	Scalable, Pay-as-you-go	Varying Costs	Poor to Best	$ to $$$

While Cloud computing is more and more popular these days, it is not always the best option compared to traditional hosting company - it really depends on what the website's purpose is and what its clientele it is trying to attract. For example, it does not make much sense to use Cloud Hosting and have your site mirrored in multiple regions if the website promotes services requiring physical presence in Oregon. You will get better performance, price and have a fixed budget with a local hosting company.

When it comes to performance, your host should have a high level of reliability, or up-time, which should be at least 99,99%. (Nowadays, sadly, fewer and fewer providers even announce their uptime - far gone are the days where companies would put 99,999% or 99,9999% uptime promises on their site as a badge of honor - and if they do today, it is 99,9% - which means almost 9 hrs of downtime - depending on when those periods of downtime hit and what your website's purpose is, that could be problematic).

Beyond having the right hardware, supporting the right technology, it is important for your site to load quickly and from a hosting standpoint, that means providing advanced caching mechanisms (whether at the Apache module level or through solutions like LiteSpeed and others) as well as providing access to a Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

Your hosting provider should have as a minimum free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for your website (and options for others to be easily installed is always appreciated), automated daily backups (ideally with onsite and off-site backup options) as well as DDoS protection.

And of course, specific knowledge of Joomla not just on their sales page but via their support service is sure helpful. From installation all of the way through to making it run in an optimized manner on that hosting platform (best PHP settings and optimized database configurations) and beyond is what you can expect from the right hosting partner.

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CHAPTER 2 - THE CMS

Joomla has been around for 19 years and since the good old days of Joomla 1.0, there should have been a lot of improvements, enhancements and optimisations...

Here are some that help provide an optimized website experience and which you should configure correctly:

1. Codebase Cleanup is continually optimized and cleaned up, enhancing performance and maintainability.
2. Support for PHP 8.2 resulting in faster execution times and improved overall performance.
3. Switch up to MySQL 8.0.11+ compatibility which allows for better database performance and features.
4. Enhanced URL handling and final slash behavior improvements contribute to better search engine optimization.
5. Rich Snippets Enhancement in the new Schema plugins system allows easier configuration of structured data, improving visibility in search results.
6. Jooa11y Accessibility Checker Update has been integrated, improving the detection and correction of accessibility issues.

are some of the optimization enhancements in Joomla 5 that help to make your site run smoother, faster, better and more...

The built-in capabilities of your template or framework such as CSS and/or Javascript minification, page caching, and other optimization techniques have the advantage of being built-in but can require quite a bit of continuous testing and tweaking over time. To make your life a bit more automated, easier and squeeze out often considerable speed improvements: there are some great extensions that you can consider : JCH Optimize, Instant Page, JSpeed and Speed Cache.

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CHAPTER 3 - TO FRAMEWORK OR NOT TO FRAMEWORK

When it comes to website optimization and frameworks, there is a rather common idea that to use a framework will slow down a website or negatively affect your GTMetrix, Pagespeed or other rating/benchmark results… (as illustrated from a recent conversation I saw):

But as often is the case, there are multiple roads that lead to Rome. 

Of course, absolutely, building your Joomla 5 website with just the core, a few overrides, very limited use of extensions and optimized images (and a few other steps) is a great way to go and will get you great, fast results out of the box.

But, as discussed in a previous series I wrote for JCM about Templates, Frameworks and more which starts in May 2024, some modern frameworks are also great at giving you the tools needed to build an optimized website.

No matter which path you choose, you really can’t go wrong since you have Joomla 5 as your CMS foundation but it will always take a certain amount of following best practices, doing the work to get the best results… Hopefully, by the time you have finished reading all of the chapters in this series, you will have at least a couple new practices to add to your routine and be better armed to take on that work.

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As you can glean from this first article on website optimization, building a website correctly is not for the faint of heart. When talking with a customer recently, I estimated that to build a website the right way, there are some 150 steps - which is why it is great that Joomla 5 helps you in so many areas and why having the help of a professional can be useful.

See you next month for the next CHAPTERS in this vast topic that is optimization!


* - I am aware that the Joomla 5 requirements are lower - but we are aiming for better/best results.