Speed suggestions

[ed]

I am talking with Ben about servers etc. but these suggestions came up:

Taking a quick look at the YSlow profile of the site, there are a couple optimization opportunities:

1) 8 external stylesheets -- most can be consolidated automatically by Drupal

2) no expires header on css or image files

[jim]

This will improve speed, yes - and indeed the CSS optimisation is _supposed_ to be on so resolves (1)

As for (2), no expires is a good idea - will need to look into modules that handle this.

However, these enhancements will make little improvement to the user experience when the site is on such a slow server.

[jim]

1. is done and will remain done...
2. Expires headers - NEEDS CHRIS!

Chris, solution below and here ​http://drupal.org/node/272082, please implement this:

1.Changing the future date for the Expires headers is easy enough: simply edit your .htaccess file. Your Apache server must also have mod_expires installed, this is available by default on most servers.
2.Enable 'LoadModule? expires_module modules/mod_expires.so' in your apache configutation file.
3.Add the below lines on your .htaccess file.

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType text/html A1
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 3 months"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 3 months"

[chris]

I have added the apache directives suggetsed in #comment:2 to the http and http virtual host, the config files being /usr/local/etc/apache22/extra/httpd-ssl.conf /usr/local/etc/apache22/and Includes/vhost-transnetwww.conf