There is a slew of methods to speed your site up–which is not only the polite thing to do for your guests–but helps with Speed Engine Optimisation (SEO) too. Google in particular looks at how quickly your site loads when deciding how to rank your site.
Now, if you’re familiar with web servers then everythign you need to know is written below. If not, this is the sort of thing you want to have an expert do for you; a faster site is too good an opportunity to pass up.
Browser caching is a process whereby we’re able to reduce the number of HTTP requests the server needs to process, which reduced page load times. Your server tells the visitor’s browser not to look for certain filkes everytime–usually the file that don’t change often anyway.
Edit your .htaccess file for your site, and include this code:
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
# by Peter Mahoney of peterwm.com
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 2 days"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
Restart your web server, and you’re done!
Cache that, baby.
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