Reduce Initial Server Response Time | TTFB
Server Response Time is the amount of time between when a web client makes a request and the server responds to that request. SRT (Server Response Time) is measured in a unit known as TTFB (Time to First Byte). TTFB is the time it takes for the browser to receive the first byte in response to the browser request. It is measured in milliseconds.
How to improve server response times?
When a user requests your page, this request needs to be sent to the server, and the server needs to generate an appropriate response and send back your page resources. You should reduce your server response time under 200ms (milliseconds). There are multiple strategies to improve your server response times. Some of the key ones are:
- Choose Your Web Server Carefully
- Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Implementing server-side caching
- Optimize Your Database
- Minify and combining external files
Choose Your Web Server Carefully
Use a reliable and fast web hosting is essential to maintain fast server response times that do not fluctuate. To achieve that, it is necessary to invest in a high-performance server. So, ensuring that you are using a reputable and optimal hosting provider is important. Unfortunately, each web server configuration differs from another, so there's no generalized solution for optimizing a web server. Investing a little bit of time in the beginning, will pay off later as you are better able to handle changes in your server needs. When choosing between different hosting provider packages, check for online reviews and recommendations for providers that can maintain a fast server response time that is also stable.
Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) will typically place servers at the exchange points between different networks. They are geographically spread out to provide content to users as fast as possible. A primary benefit of a CDN is its ability to deliver content quickly and efficiently. CDN performance optimizations can be broken into three categories:
- Distance reduction
- Hardware/software optimizations
- Reduced data transfer
These ensures all web page visitors enjoy fast response times. The majority of technology companies including companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft use CDNs to reduce latency in loading web page content.
Implementing server-side caching
The goal of server side caching is to have a copy of a page available on the server. It is the practice of serving a pre-generated version of your page when requested, rather than having the server process and generate the page on demand. So, check with your web host to see what they offer as far as object caching does. Often, all you need to do is ask your host to enable it.
Optimize Your Database
In most cases, your web site runs a query, the server refers to the database to generate a response. With the lapse of time, the database stores redundant data, so addressing it may become a hard time. Slow queries are the one of the major reason why a server responds to a request slowly, so you should spend time identifying ways to prevent bottlenecks. Before engaging in a query optimization method, such as logical optimization or physical optimization, the cost of the method, the processing power of the method, and the overall optimization offered must be assessed. Database searches can become larger over time, especially as the database increases in size, which means one method will not work for every database.
Minify and combining external files
When your web page loads, JavaScript and CSS are loaded based on their location and the number of each file type stored. What this means for your server response is that the more JavaScript or CSS files located on the site, the more times the files need to be fetched by the server to load the content.
Minify is reducing the size of the code. You can minify by removing redundant and long variables, unwanted characters, and comments. It improves performance for your page overall by decreasing the load time. Minifying multiple scripts together can yield even greater savings. Also, multiple files require multiple HTTP requests, so when you put them all into one file, only one request is needed.
Tools To Test and Improve Server Response Time
If you want to be sure your site is up to standard, there are many ways to check your server's speed and performance.
Summing Up: What To Do Now
Once the issues are resolved, you must continue measuring your server response times and address any future performance bottlenecks.
- Gather and inspect existing performance and data.
- Identify and fix top performance bottlenecks.
- Monitor and alert for any future performance regressions.
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