How To Optimize Your PHP Website Using PHP X-Ray
The Web Hosting Magic team is happy to announce that our PHP optimization tool called PHP X-Ray has exited beta testing and is now available to customers.
You know that feeling you get when you have done everything you could to optimize your PHP website performance, and still, nothing seems to work.
As a good webmaster, you have gone through the code, done everything you could, and even reinstall the CMS software.
You just can't seem to nail the cause of the sluggish-performing website which can be because of:
- poorly-coded plugins & theme
- slow database queries
- poorly-written code functionality
- external calls
- slow APIs
- and even possibly spikes in website traffic.
The fact is that without a dedicated tracing tool that easily plugs into your CMS and analyzes the site to help you identify the root cause, resolving this might be like shooting in the wind and hoping something will stick.
Enter PHP X-Ray.
PHP X-Ray (located in the Software section) is a tool you can use to monitor and diagnose performance in content management systems (CMS) applications such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal easily without affecting uptime.
So instead of tediously combing through web application code and plugins, you can scan your website, identify performance bottlenecks in case of a slow website and resolve them swiftly.
How To Find Your Slow Website Issue Using PHP X-Ray
For accounts or hosting packages with PHP X-Ray enabled, all you need to do is to:
- Log in to your cPanel and scroll down to Software.
- Click on PHP X-Ray and when the page loads, create a tracing task. If you are unable to see the tool in Jupiter, please change your theme to paper_lantern.
- Specify the site URLs or domains that have performance issues by selecting the domain from the drop-down list. To specify URL or wildcard, end-users should use the input field next to the domain. Please note that the URL option should be a valid URL of the domain that exists on your current hosting account. The field supports wildcard matching. Click How to use special characters to learn more about wildcard matching.
- Click Run, then visit the site and perform an action.
For instance, you can submit a form on the site to perform a POST request, which will trigger PHP X-Ray data collection.
Now return to the tracing dashboard to review feedback.
You will see the task in the list of tracing tasks.
PHP X-Ray will sort requests by order of the slowest requests at the top so that you can prioritize issues.
View the Details page to get additional information about the performance issue and feedback on the root cause.
Let's say that a WordPress plugin is using extensive resources for the request, you will find the details on this page.
All you have to do is to disable the plugin in the CMS administrative dashboard.
Revisit the site, and performance should improve.
The Details page in the trace dashboard should also show no performance issues.
We hope that this will help you optimize your website without the need to spend a fortune on doing just that.
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