JCH-Optimize (with video)
JCH Optimize is a pretty nice and simple plugin that can speed up your website speed considerably by minimizing HTTP-requests and size, optimizing Javascript, etc.. Best of all that it is completely free, and available for both Joomla 2.5 and 3. It is quite popular, and it is listed as one of the Community Choice winners on the JED.
You can activate various levels of the plugin. Though sometimes some feautures could not work well with some parts or extensions of your site, it is well worth trying it out, and see which features work well. Make sure to check the speed of your website before and after with tools like Google Page Speed or GT-Metrix, you could be surprised by the results....
Configuration
First of all, download install and activate the plugin, and then check the options:
Most of the parameters are pretty self-explanatary, or just play with the options. Usually I just activate all features. If the site keeps functioning, I leave it at that. If something breaks, I just switch of the parameter that causes it. Especially the "Defer javascript" parameter sometimes breaks stuff, especially if your site is heavy with Javascripts. Also deferring sometimes breaks the collapsible bootstrap responsive menu on mobile devices.
Using the advanced tab, you can even include or exclude parts or extensions of your site, either all extensions, or just very specific ones. The default setting is to exclude all extensions from being processed. Also play with this option. Dependant on whether you have many third-party extensions or not, this can result in additional performance gain.
UPDATE: Recently, a PRO-version of the plugin has become available. This even added some more features, like asynchronous loading of the JCH-output, and even more thorough searching of your HTML for code to be compacted. See the related blog-article about this feature.
Finally. don't be surprised if your site is twice as fast as it used to be, or more....
Check your site carefully
Make sure to check your site carefully after optimization. As said, sometimes stuff breaks without noticing right away. Possible issues can be:
- Bootstrap responsive menu's not working
- Issues with lower versions of Internet Explorer
- Contact forms not working
By tuning carefully you can often find the parameter that causes the issue. Especially the settings regarding combining and deferring Javascript are the cause of the issue. Just switch off those options and leave the rest switched on then.
Video
If you want you can also check a Youtube video about the plugin that I created: