Optimizing Magento 1 core for better performance

Performance optimization is a very loud topic for Magento store owners. How to reduce server expenses and increase the speed of the site is the question we get almost every day at Magebit.

We have created one of a kind Magento extension that increases the performance of Magento and reduces the load on the server. No, this is not an extension as others that just compresses JS/CSS files. We think CDN and Magento built in compiler works good enough. This is an extension that optimizes Magento core code for better performance.

Let’s start with the simple things

The first task for the extension is simple but effective — disable all logging and reporting. Next, dynamic layout handles are removed which also gives a slight performance boost of the Magento store. And the third simple but effective method for increasing site speed is enabling cms block/widget and topmenu cache. These aren’t cached by default.

Rewriting core

Yes, Magento is well built but that does not mean it cannot be optimized. One of the biggest issue in Magento core was found in products isSalable method. That is now optimized in this extension. For very small and simple sites it is not a noticeable speed improvement but for large enterprises the speed improvement is major. In this extension we also optimized addAttributeToFilter method for configurable products.

Sure, this extension does not do any magic. Only the basic optimizations that can help a lot when doing full site audits and improvements.

Results

Below are the observations before and after we put this extension on one of our clients sites — fashion retailer on Magento Enterprise.

The extension is free to use for everyone: https://bitbucket.org/magebit/magebit_speedy/overview

Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.