How to improve drupal’s performance through cloudways

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How To Improve Performance Through
Cloudways
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Introduction

• In the realm of web development and website
  ownership, what do you think is the most
  important factor in the success of your website?
• Well, it is none other than the hosting
  provider you choose. A good hosting provider not
  only offers maximum uptime for your website but
  also positively affect the page load times, which
  in turn affects your websites SEO. It is
  imperative then that you choose the best possible
  hosting provider for your Drupal website.

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• Even though Drupal in itself is quite well
  optimized, the server it runs on matters a lot.
  Hosting your Drupal website on a fast server
  ensures that your site doesnt crash when the
  traffic and resource requirements move closer to
  the maximum.
• But before we delve into that, lets take a
  look at what you, as a user can do to improve
  your Drupal websites performance and how
  Cloudways helps in implementing the following
  measures

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Install Redis

• Redis is a very well known open-source
  in-memory database software. It is essentially
  used as a caching system, and as such is most
  often referred to as Redis cache. It is extremely
  fast and the very best at what it does. The fact
  that Twitter uses it further consolidates the
  reputation of the cache system.
• Now, in any other hosting provider, you would
  typically need to write a set of commands or
  perform a manual installation of Redis on your
  server. This requires in-depth technical know-how
  and the process often leads to problems.

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• Cloudways provides one-click installation
  of Redis on your server. In fact, the process is
  over with a single click.
• For more detailed instructions on how to
  get Redis running on a Drupal website hosted at
  Cloudways, check out this blog post Turbocharge
  Your Drupal Website With Redis

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Install Memcache

• Memcache is another open-source caching
  software, that when used alongside Redis, can
  significantly improve the speed of your Drupal
  website.
• In contrast to Redis, Memcache caches objects
  and data in the RAM, thereby eliminating the need
  of reading external sources multiple times.
• Just like Redis, Cloudways offer one-click
  install option for Memcache. This means that you
  do not have to fiddle with CLI commands or
  setting up environment variables. Cloudways does
  it all for you.

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To check out the complete process of setting up
Memcache on a Drupal website hosted at Cloudways,
see our blog post How To Install Memcache On
Your Drupal Site
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Install Varnish

• So now, youve got two of the best caching
  systems (Redis and Memcache) setup and running on
  your Drupal website at Cloudways. What more can
  you do? Well, how about installing an HTTP
  accelerator such as Varnish.
• But why Varnish? Well, Ill let this
  sentence(taken from the Wikipedia) speak for
  itself Varnish is used by high-profile,
  high-traffic websites including Wikipedia, online
  newspaper sites such as The New York Times, The
  Guardian, The Hindu, Corriere della Sera, social
  media and content sites such as Facebook, Twitter,
   Reddit, Vimeo, and Tumblr. In 2012, 5 of the
  top 10,000 sites in the web used the software.2

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• The good news is that Varnish comes pre-installed
  at all Cloudways servers. The user only has to do
  is enable it by clicking on a toggle!
• Check out my post How to install Varnish on a
  Drupal website at Cloudways for the complete
  procedure.

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Add Elasticsearch

• This point doesnt directly impact the
  performance of your Drupal website, but it does
  have an indirect effect on it.
• Lets imagine a scenario, where you have a
  large website with GBs of data and thousands of
  visitors. Lets say a visitor arrives at your
  website and wants to access something that was
  posted some months ago. Do you think he/she would
  be bothered to scour through so much data to get
  to that one piece? Yup, they wouldnt. To
  mitigate this problem, the best solution for you
  is to use  Elasticsearch.

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• Elasticsearch is an open source search engine
  based on Lucene. It provides extremely fast
  search capabilities as well as auto-complete
  searches. Setting it up manually is quite a
  hassle. To solve this problem, check out this
  detailed post How To Install And Enable
  Elasticsearch On Drupal website at Cloudways.

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Conclusion

• Cloudways aim to provide every possible way
  of helping out their customers. The one-click
  installation processes for popular cache
  technologies and the search engine is just one
  aspect of ensuring that the Drupal websites
  hosted on Cloudways Platform continue to perform
  at the maximum.
• If you ever get stuck anywhere, you can
  contact our customer support which is available
  24/7. If you want to read more about how you can
  speed up your Drupal site, see 10 Tips To Speed
  Up Your Drupal Website.