Prerequisites This is part 1 of a series of steps that I take to speed up Magento. With these steps, I've managed to get a Magento website to load all elements in under 3 seconds. Visually, it appears to be less than 1 second. I've also chopped the loading speed of client websites in half. (Note:...

Prerequisites Thank you for visiting my blog. First, I'd like to point out that this guide does not apply to cloud hosted websites such as Shopify or big commerce. What are expires headers Expires headers tell the browser, which elements of a website to keep in the browser cache and for how long. Every time...

After you've upgraded to Magento version 1.9.3.4 have you noticed that your check out just sits on billing information and doesn't proceed to the shipping options? Apparently, the Magento team discovered a security issue and added form key validation on check out. What are form keys? Form keys help prevent Cross Site Request Forgery attacks on Magento...

Utilizing expires headers is an important part of optimizing your website. At times it can be tricky. Apache2 configuration syntax is extremely particular. I've gathered a few items to check when you've experienced this issue. 1. Server logs When troubleshooting anything with Apache 2, your first step should be checking the apache error log. The...

Quick Introduction Recently I was optimizing a client website on a development server. Typically when optimizing I'll start with going through .htaccess and ensuring that it’s set up for the best web performance. I will typically spend the most time with Expires headers. Every website will respond to expires headers differently which is the reason...

Prerequisites It's always best to upgrade your php version to the latest stable version but keep in mind, your website must be able to handle the upgrade. This tutorial assumes that you're running Ubuntu Trusty and Mod php. You must have the ability to run these commands as root or as a sudo user. If...