The LAMP Stack is one of the most popular Linux web stacks used by small and moderate size websites. No wonder – most content management systems, such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and numerous others, are built with this stack in mind. If you’re using a CMS, chances are that you’re also working with a LAMP stack on your Linux VPS hosting server. Although it works fine on its own, there are a few tweaks that you can make to get the best performance out of it, and in turn, your whole system.
Use Opcode Cache for PHP
Repeating the same processes over and over is a waste of precious resources, especially on PHP-based applications. That’s why it’s incredibly useful to implement Opcode Caching as it caches the results of PHP code compilations. The next time the PHP is called on, it will load from the stored data instead of creating a new one, speeding up processing.
Some of the more notable caches are Zend Opcache, XCache, APC, eAccelerator, and Memcache. These work just fine with our Linux VPS hosting services.
Disable unwanted Apache modules
Stable, well-supported, and most importantly free, this software is quite popular with many users. It comes with many features and modules that are enabled by default and each of them uses memory and CPU. But not every single feature is used and if so, it’s best to disable them to reduce unnecessary overhead.
Some Apache modules are co-dependant with others and uninstalling them might mess up the whole program and have unforeseen consequences for your Linux VPS hosting server. Outline the needs of your server and do in-depth research into the modules before disabling these features.
Use Apache mod_deflate HTTP compression
Enabling HTML compression with this command will significantly boost your website’s loading speeds. This module compresses the page’s text, HTML and XML files down to 70% of their actual size. Nowadays all browsers support compressed content and doing this will ultimately save some server bandwidth.
If the visitors are using outdated browsers, they may still experience some page speed issues. Some older web software has trouble loading and viewing compressed content.
Use Apache mod_expires caching
Load times can be substantially improved by also adding an “expires headers” via “mod_expires”. This will prevent the re-downloading of non-expired content by site visitors. Instead, certain data will be loaded from their local browser cache. Such files as images, CSS, and JavaScript can also be cached.
Tune the PHP.ini performance
You can improve your Linux VPS hosting system and LAMP Stack’s performance by also tweaking the php.ini file. One great method is to increase the memory limit specified in it. The “memory_limit” parameter refers to the maximum amount of primary memory a script can use. It’s advised to increase it to either 64 MB or 128 MB, depending on how much physical memory is available on the server.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to enable HTML compression and output buffering, and to disable “’magic_quotes_” and “register_globals”. This will result in a noticeable system boost.
Knowing how to optimize LAMP stack for Linux and Tweaking VPS hosting server for better performance is definitely worth the effort. Not only will it significantly improve the system’s processes and resource usage, but it will also ensure a better user experience for the visitors of your website.