Installed Joomla 2.5 - All F's - Please help. Caching explained

[andydavies]

Based on the results you've linked to http://www.webpagetest.org/result/121119...press_text


Compression of CSS and JS isn't enabled, so I guess the compressor plugin isn't doing it's job correctly.

BTW I tend to configure this at the web server level rather than using plugins

[PaulWV]

I have resolved the compressed transfer. Got an A. I keep getting between A and B. It's good.
I disabled two plugins.

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/121121...36a6f9be6/

The problem is with the First Byte and the Cache Static. Both Fs.
0.5s First Byte time. Isn't that good?

Any help would be great on what to do.

Thanks.

[GreenGecko]

I'd spend more time preparing images for the site, compressing them better. Mod_expires seems to be running fine - you're caching all you've got control over.

Now you need to tune your server... opcode cacher, database configuration, maybe a swap to nginx / php-fpm???

[PaulWV]

Important info:

I finally got an A for First Byte, but not the right solution.

I have Joomla caching turned off and using APC caching. It's slightly slow and it gives an F for First Byte.

**If I enable Joomla caching, it goes VERY FAST and I get an A.

The problem is, when I post news article, I cannot view them right away until the cache clears. I need to have my article show up right away, while using Joomla cahe or else I have to settle for APC caching.

[GreenGecko]

That sort of implies that the Joomla! caching you're using is pre-creating the pages in some way. I find it hard to understand that the inbuilt cache is incapable of automatically refreshing on content update (true!), or that there's no way that you can manually refresh it as a last resort (Tools -> Clean Cache).

According to the Joomla! docs, there are a number of engines that you can use... APC, Eaccelorator, File, Memcache, XCache. Which are you set up with?

[PaulWV]

I am using APC caching. That shows the updates instantly.

But if I use Joomla "File" caching, I need to clear cache to view updates. We cannot clear cache 50 times daily, it defeats the purpose of caching. I tried the cleancache addon that auto cleans on submission, but that's not a good solution at all.

Yes you're right, it's hard to understand that the inbuilt cache is incapable of refreshing the content automatically.

Thanks