What this book covers

Merging CSS files (Must know) shows you how to gather all the CSS files scattered over your Magento, which will optimize the loading time in a way you wouldn't expect.

Merging JavaScript (Must know) shows you how to merge JavaScript files inside a unique file, in the same way as CSS files.

Logging files (Must know) explains that for every main action your Magento has done, it has to write a line on your hard drive in order to help you monitor your e-commerce. Nevertheless, this feature is really resource-consuming.

Compiling (Must know) introduces you to the lookup, which is a process that finds PHP files (that Magento are mainly composed of) in your web server. We can help this process to run faster using compilation.

Managing the index (Must know) introduces you to the index, which is a data structure that accelerates the retrieving process of the information present in your database.

Removing PayPal's logo (Must know) explains how easy it is to make money through PayPal. Unfortunately, retrieving the logo from their website takes a while. That's why we will remove it and display a locally-hosted image instead.

Using the Magento caching system (Must know) introduces you to Magento's built-in caching system for saving frequently asked requests.

Enhancing the expiration date (Should know) shows you that browsers can save some of your website content, such as images and scripts. This recipe explains how to encourage them to save it for a longer time.

Keeping your connections alive (Should know) shows you how customers accede to your e-commerce through HTTP and TCP connections. We will manage to proceed many HTTP connections in one TCP connection.

Storing your sessions in the database (Should know) shows you that when a client comes back to your website after a few days, he will still have information such as shopping carts intact.

Configuring MySQL (Should know) explains how MySQL is provided with settings in order to make it work on every computer. Improve the settings for your hardware.

Using a memory-based filesystem for caching (Become an expert) introduces you to the slowest component of a computer, the hard drive, and how Magento makes massive use of it. This lets you use your available RAM.

Compressing your code – gzip (Become an expert) walks you through the compression algorithms created for plain text that can be used to compress all your codes files.

Installing a PHP accelerator (Become an expert) explains that PHP is a language that can be transformed, on demand, to be understandable by your processors. We can save this transformation.

Clustering (Become an expert) shows you how to configure a set of loosely connected computers working together for handling more and more customers.

Balancing load (Become an expert) explains how to dynamically redirect your customers towards the least loaded servers.

Replicating the database (Become an expert) shows you how to create multiple nodes for storing systems so as to optimize the reading and writing of data.

Checking the configuration (Must know) explains how to identify common misconfigurations.

Clearing caches (Must know) explains how to clear all your caches in order to start afresh.

Logging (Must know) shows you how to find all your log files in your filesystem.

Using template hints (Must know) explains how to display template-related information for debugging purposes.

Using the Profiler (Should know) explains how to use the Profiler. Profiler is a monitoring system used to measure time on your Magento.

Using a debugger (Should know) explains how to analyze your code step-by-step if all the information you have does not tell you where the bugs are.