4 innovative tools for speeding your site up
The internet is continuously evolving. Speed, however, was and will always remain the gauge of the web’s progress and qualification of a web designer. So, here are some helpful technologies that will boost the speed of your site.
HTTP/2
HTTP/2 is a fresh version of the World Wide Web protocol. It was introduced in May 2015 and is being supported since a few months after.
The most mesmerizing feature that HTTP/2 offers is multiplexing. This feature has revolutionized the world of web design as it has the capacity to cover various requests at the same time.
HTTP/2 has the capacity to compress headers before the demanded data are sent; this shortens the process of transport. Last but not least, unlike HTTP/1, HTTP/2 is binary and not textual.
Moreover, HTTP/2 has invalidated features like Data URIs and sprites.
The new version was needed because was highly effective for loading a large image, but it couldn’t effectively load a number of small images by covering numerous requests in one connection.
The introduction of HTTP/2 has resulted in an up to 50% performance boost.
The problem with switching to HTTP/2 is not at all related to HTTP/2 itself. Despite the fact that HTTP/2 does not need a secured website directly, browsers can support it over SSL only.
As a result, an SSL certificate should be your first step towards HTTP/2.
After you have acquired a certificate, implementing HTTP/2 independently is only likely by administering your server. Or else, your web hosting or server hosting company will factor in the most.
Findings of W3Techs, show that just about 7% only are using HTTP/2.
BROTLI
Past fall, Google came up with this new compression algorithm known as Brotli. As a general rule, compression algorithms are designed to decrease the magnitude of data transported.
Currently, only Chrome and Firefox are supporting Brotli. However, other browsers are expected to follow soon. At present, none of the server features Brotli by default. As all key servers such as Nginx, Node.js, and Apache need packet installation.
Acceding to Google, the compression ratio of Brotli is 20-26% better in comparison with other options currently available. That is why, it enables you to save around 40% of your traffic on HTML files and about 25% on CSS and Javascript.
CDN
A combination of servers across the world, which contain copies of your site’s content like images, videos, software etc., is known as a Content Delivery Network. When someone accesses them, your data from a server near the person accessing it loads. CDN has increased the speed of loading throughout the planet.
With CDN, on average, a website loads 50% faster and even more.
CDN has not only enhanced the loading speed but the reliability of your site has also increased a great deal. The content is scattered across numerous servers, thus your web hosting server saves a substantial amount of traffic. As a result, your web hosting server has lesser likelihood of crashing.
SSL CERTIFICATE
The simplest way to define SSL certificate is that it encrypt the link between a server and a client. You can easily obtain a SSL certificate. Moreover, Let’s Encrypt offers the certification for free.
If you are not aware of Let’s Encrypt, it is a new authority that offers certifications. Let’s Encrypt aims to eradicate all the manual procedures that are needed for attaining a certificate. The authority has automated the entire process and the processing now takes a few minutes only. You can obtain the certification from your web hosting provider.
Let’s Encrypt separated from public beta in April 2016.