Speed gives us a sense of 'moving forward', which is nonetheless a positive experience in its own terms. But, what has speed to do with websites? Well, site speed optimization is one of the key factors that can boost a site's performance, page visits, generate more leads as well as improve conversions.

Site speed optimisation is integral to the performance and success of a Joomla website; and it can be done seamlessly by measuring, learning, optimizing and doing it repeatedly. Moreover, recent changes in Google has added to the concern for Joomla website owners as speed of a website – like how fast the website loads will matter – as recent Google updates indicates on page rankings of slow loading websites to be affected.

So, if you want to add up to the speed and performance of your Joomla website, here are 5 plugins that can effectively speed up your Joomla website.

JavaScript Control Plugin
Using jQuery instead of Mootools have many a times been responsible for slowing down Joomla website speed significantly. JavaScript Control Plugin is a great plugin to come to your rescue in such situations as it can effectively disable Mootools-core.js or Mootools-more.js to load the page faster. The highlight of this plugin is that it allows you to experience each component, so as to determine which of the options the site can load without- thus only loading necessary scripts and improving website performance.

SPEED UP or 'TurboGears for Joomla'
In case you are having difficulty accessing the backend of your Joomla website (which can really be irritably slow sometimes) so as to add content, make any changes or administrate your website, you may try using SPEED UP. Developed by Phil Taylor and GoogleGears, this well-designed application also known as 'TurboGears for Joomla' helps speed up your Joomla admin console when you want to add posts and work within the website. However, this does not at all affect the speed of the Joomla website when visitors access it.

JotCache
JotCache plugin replaces the standard Joomla Cache for a faster system. So, every time you refresh the page, it changes the modules and caches parts of the page for faster reloads. Moreover, the additional plugin features also allow you to compress older content using gzip, and to clear selected caches without requiring to clear the entire website.

Content Static
Converting your Joomla web pages to HTML static pages can speed up your website as it saves on SQL resources that call for additional time to load a page from the hosting database. It may so happen that you may not want to apply this on the entire website as it doesn't work with vote or review request web pages.

ScriptMerge
ScriptMerge plugin combines all related files into a single one, constraining you from having lots of JavaScript and cascade style sheets that perform similar functions. The features of this plugin allow you to merge CSS and JS, besides helping you to compress old CSS and JS files that you seldom use. When using the plugin, the application allows you to choose to "exclude" these scripts, even if you come across certain files that can't be compressed or merged - thus loading necessary files only.

Are you using any plugin to speed up your Joomla website? Do share with us.

Author Bio
Hariot leads a team of professional Joomla Developers at VITEB, a leading Web Application Development Agency offering a plethora of web and application development services to a large customer-base of global clientele. She has an accomplished track record of developing websites in Joomla customized as per clients requirements.