Speed arrow Server Response Time

server responding timely
  1. A web browser requests something from your server.
  2. Your web server responds to that request.

The time between those two events is known as the "Server Response Time". No matter how optimized your web pages are for speed, if your server response time is slow your pages will display slow.

How to improve server response time

There are two basic ways to do this

This page can help you determine what is the best route for your situation. As with most things for a webmaster, this is a time vs money decision.

Server response time factors

Four main things come together to determine your server response time:

Website Traffic

As a website gets more traffic, it uses more server resources. A website that once was quick, crisp and fast becomes slow and sluggish as traffic goes up.

How does traffic affect server response time?

Just like a restaurant serving cheeseburgers, a web server can only serve so many people at one time. The longer it takes to serve each person, the less people can be served. The more resources that are used to serve people the less resources there are for backend things like PHP or other things that may be needed to serve your users.

In terms of cheeseburgers, if more people are at the counter taking orders then there are less people cooking cheeseburgers.

Website Resource Usage

Each thing your webpage has to do to be displayed adds up to some pretty heavy server usage. The average Wordpress theme it is likely loading several stylesheets, several scripts, and other resources from your own server like images.

That means that for each page view of your website you are likely using the webserver dozens of times. That adds up.

Here is an oversimplified example. Lets say that a webserver could handle exactly 100 requests per second. In that one second you could serve...

In that admittedly oversimplified example, the webmaster who uses page resources wisely can improve server capacity by enormous amounts. Not only will the server be able to serve more visitors, it will respond quicker because its load is reduced.

To find out how many requests your webpage is making you can use this tool which will display many things about your webpage including how many resources it is using.

How to reduce the resources a page uses

The less resources like css, javascript, etc. your pages use, the faster your pages will load and the less stress you will put on your web server.

Following the page speed best practices will increase the amount of people your server can serve effectively. Reducing the amount of files each webpage needs to call also reduces the work the server needs to do.

Web hosting

Make sure you have the right web host for the job. The first step is to ensure you are not stretching the resources you have too thin.

If you are like me, you started out with the cheapest possible host.

If that is true, now that you have more traffic you will need to upgrade your hosting. Here are my general thoughts and recommendations on hosting.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the economical choice to start out with. My general thoughts on shared hosting is that good shared hosting is usually around 5 dollars a month. You can get it for less, but beware things like "99 cent hosting" or something unless it is a specific sale.

A trustable shared web host should have been in business for a several years and should have a phone number that you can call for help. The only low cost shared hosting I can truly recommend is...

Wordpress hosting

The truth is if you are using Wordpresss it would be wise to get Wordpress specific web hosting. This type of hosting optimizes for the the inherit problems that come with Wordpress and dynamic content in general. A good Wordpress host will start out at about 20 to 30 dollars a month.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server - A VPS host is the next step after you outgrow shared hosting. It can require more knowledge for the more economical VPS hosting packages or you have to pay up for the "Managed VPS host". VPS hosting ranges from 20 to 50 dollars a month for a typical service, more for higher features.

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server server is your own machine that only you are using. is the next step after you outgrow VPS hosting. Like VPS hosting, dedicated servers have managed accounts and unmanaged accounts if you know your way around a server. Quality dedicated servers typically cost from 90 dollars to several hundred dollars a month.

Cloud server / Advanced

If you don't need a panel and you know your way around a box. These guys are great for just spinning up test servers or app servers. I have used them full time for some of my projects.

Content delivery networks

A CDN (content delivery network) will store your files all over the world. This allows users all over the world to see your pages faster because they are receiving files from closer to their physical location.

Content delivery networks are a good solution when your users are spread around the globe or a large country. For example, if your webpages are hosted on the east coast or west coast of America, you will have users from the other coast that may see improvements if you add a CDN.

I explain CDNs more in depth here.

Wordpress / PHP usage

Every Wordpress site on the web uses PHP. Most of those pages have slow server response times because instead of just handing over a file, the server has to take other steps, gather additional resources and complete tasks prior to responding to the web browser requesting the webpage.

The more things your server has to do to serve a customer, the slower it must respond to others. So if you have a php script on your webpage you need to ensure that the thing that the PHP is doing is important enough to slow down your pages.

The way PHP works is basically it must complete the php stuff before your page can display. Even if you try to "push" content to the user, the server has to read and follow those PHP instructions. There are a surprising amount of websites that are ineffectively using PHP that they may not even need to be using.

Caching

Wordpress users should make sure they have a caching solution. This one step is likely the most effective single step a Wordpress user can take to speed up their site and free their web server from unnessasary work. To improve performance try W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.

Web Server Software Configuration and Selection

Are you sure you are using the right web server software? There are several choices, and most of them are free. Here are a few of the more popular ones that I have experience with.

No matter what web server software you are using, it can likely be configured better for your own purposes. If you do not know enough about your web server to configure it, you should probably hire someone to help you. It can get pretty detailed.

Let's go over some pros and cons of each server.

Apache

Apache is free and is the most used webserver on the web. Because it is so well used it also enjoys great documentation. A pretty good portion of tutorials on the web kinda assume you have Apache because it was used by just about every website not too long ago. The default install of Apache is not the best performer, but it has so many users and modules and add ons that it can be made to do just about anything.

Our goal for now is to improve server response time, and Apache is highly configurable and alot of people know how to do so. Apache is a safe bet for just about any website, but it has to be configured well by a knowlegeble person to do its best. Php runs at an average pace.

Nginx

The Nginx web server is free and it is the darling of most high traffic websites and for web developers because it performs like a dream even at its default install. Nginx uses less resources and can therefore handle much more traffic than just about any other webserver out there. Nginx typically has the fastest server response time in my experience. PHP runs fast with Nginx.

Litespeed

Litespeed webserver has free versions and paid versions. It is much faster and performs better that Apache, with the added benefit of being completely compatible with Apache. Any configurations you make to Apache are respected by Litespeed and it uses the same .htaccess file as Apache. This means that moving to Litespeed is pretty painless for Apache users. PHP runs six times faster with Litespeed.

How can I use this to improve my server response time?

In a nutshell... You can significantly improve the server response time by changing your web server software or by configuring it better.

If you have money, pay someone to configure what you have or to decide what to use. If you do not have money then you should study them and decide for yourself. In fact I would say one of the main advantages that someone with no money has over large companies is the ability to learn, change and experiment.

Choosing the right webserver can trump many other pagespeed issues in one step and can dramatically improve you server response time. It means you have to learn and research. But you can do it.

What server to study / use?

In general I recommend Nginx (free). It is a great skill to have. It also performs incredibly. I can't think of many situations where a Wordpress install on Apache wouldn't be drastically improved by just installing Nginx. I have had great results with it and it seems to be taking over the top sites on the web.


Patrick Sextonby Patrick Sexton