fwSiteOptimizer Plugin is a Joomla! 1.5 plugin that participate in site performance enhancement.

fwSiteOptimizer Plugin can automatically optimize external CSS and JavaScript resources, which can reduce both the size and number of requests made to your website. According to Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site, to build a high performance web site, here are the most important  best practices:

• Minimize HTTP Requests
• Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
• Gzip Components

fwSiteoptimizer Plugin can help you achieve the above practice easily.

CSS and JavaScript files can be aggregated and compressed into a single file. These optimizations may reduce server load, bandwidth requirements, and page loading times. Css and JavaScript aggregation can decrease the http requests dramatically for sites built with a lot of those resources.

GZip can compress css and javascript files a lot. The plugin only need to compress the CSS and JavaScript files once, so this can save a lot of CPU times, and give a repeat response.

Requirements

• Joomla! 1.5.19 (stable or any later version)
• PHP 4.4.1 (or any late rversion) with swf support

Installation in Joomla!1.5:

• Extensions » Install/Uninstall » Select the file to install » Upload File & Install.
• Extensions » Plugin Manager » fwSiteOptimizer » Enable Plugin.

fwSiteOptimizer Plugin must be set just before Joomla! System plugin Cache, so that it can include all other plugin's result and be cachable.

Configuration

Configuration of fwSiteOptimizer plugin is related to the following parameters.

Default parameters

"Merge Css" let you aggregate stylesheet files, except those explicitely excluded from the process within the "Exclude Css Files".

"Merge Js" let you aggregate JavaScript files, except those explicitely excluded from the process within the "Exclude Js Files".

The "script position" let you precise wether the merged files will be added, aka before the end of the HEAD or the BODY tag.

"Use Defer" to defer the execution of JavaScript files (not their loading).

To disable Joomla! default script files check caption for 'Disable Mootools' and/or 'Disable Caption' (be aware of side effect within your Joomla! template or execution).

Avoiding conflict with JQuery library use the 'JQuery No Conflict' caption. The' JQuery File Name' is used to precise the libraries used by your site.

'JavaScript Custom Order' let you set the order of JavaScript files merging (and loading).

'Minify HTML' let you compress the rendered html page and, if set, removes the 'HTML Comments' and 'HTML Generator tags' wihtin the page.

Finally, 'GZip resources' is used to return zip compressed files. This option is not mandatory, as this feature can be set directly within the Apache server.

Advanced parameters

'Folder name' let you precise the directory in which merged files will be stored. by default it is in the /cache/merge folder.

'Exclude Components' disable the plugin processing for the page rendering the listed components.

'Log events' let you activate the debug mode to analyze the Plugin troubleshooting.