How to make a site on a VPS load faster

To improve the loading speed of a website on a VPS, you need to realize that every extra second of delay is a loss of not only customers, but also search engine positions. Second slowdowns affect bounce rates, user experience and conversions. We will tell you how to speed up a website on VPS with maximum detail, explaining each step and avoiding general advice.

Migration to SSD and NVMe server technologies for increased throughput

Why is this step important? Traditional HDDs limit data transfer rates at 100-150 MB/s, while SSDs reach 500 MB/s and NVMe SSDs up to 3 GB/s. The difference is significant: NVMe drives process data 20 times faster than HDDs and about 6 times faster than SSDs, which reduces read-write latency. Therefore, when choosing a VPS for your website, pay attention to the availability of NVMe drives to speed up the processing of requests and reduce latency at boot.

Configuring caching settings for faster response time

The issue of caching for VPS is a necessity, not just a recommendation. Enabling methods such as opcode caching for PHP (e.g. OPcache) can reduce PHP request processing by 30-40%. For static caching, use NGINX FastCGI Cache - it will allow cached pages to be processed without database requests, reducing response time to 0.1-0.2 seconds. According to GTmetrix, implementing proper caching reduces TTFB (time to first byte) by 40-50%.

Optimizing database performance

The database is where latency often accumulates. Setting up MySQL (or MariaDB) using table indexing reduces query processing time by a factor of 5, especially for sites with a large number of records. If you have more than 10,000 records, lack of indexing will result in significant latency as queries are processed linearly without optimizing the lookup. Using Memcached or Redis to cache query results further reduces CPU load and speeds up data processing by 20-30%.

Using modern protocols to speed up loading

Switching to HTTP/2 (or HTTP/3) protocol allows you to load your site faster due to parallel data transfer. Let's compare: HTTP/1.1 loads objects one by one, while HTTP/2 loads them simultaneously, which reduces page load time by 30%. HTTP/3 based on QUIC protocol improves loading speed by 20% compared to HTTP/2 due to fewer exchanges between server and client.

Customizing data compression to reduce download volume

Gzip and Brotli are compression algorithms that reduce the size of transmitted data by 3-5 times, depending on the type of content. For example, compressing a standard 500KB page with Brotli reduces it to 100-150KB. This means that the user's download speeds up proportionally to the reduction in data size. Enable compression to transfer less data and reduce server traffic.

Optimizing the number of HTTP requests

Minimizing requests means that we reduce the amount of resources loaded by the browser. For example, merging CSS and JavaScript files can reduce the number of HTTP requests from 50 to 20-30, which immediately reduces page load time by 25-30%. Use tools like Webpack to merge files, reducing latency and improving overall server response time.

Using Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN services, such as Cloudflare or Akamai, allow you to store copies of your website on multiple servers around the world, enabling faster content delivery. For example, if a visitor comes to your site from Europe, their request is not sent to a U.S. server, but is served to the nearest European server, reducing response time to 0.2-0.3 seconds. It has been experimentally proven that the use of CDNs improves page load times by an average of 30-40%.

Optimize image loading and use next-generation formats

Images in WebP or AVIF formats reduce their weight by up to 50% compared to JPEG or PNG with no apparent loss of quality. In addition, the lazy loading setting allows images to be loaded only as they appear in the user's line of sight. This reduces the amount of data for the initial page load, which improves the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) metric by 20-25%.

Performance monitoring to control all processes

Real-time monitoring via services such as New Relic or Datadog allows you to track latency and identify bottlenecks. Analyze, for example, what is delaying server response times. Reports show that companies using real-time monitoring reduce downtime and latency by 40%.

When renting a VPS it is worth paying attention to LikeVPS service - all their tariffs are equipped with NVMe disks, which significantly increase the speed of the site. NVMe disks provide high speed of data reading and writing, which makes them an excellent solution for projects with high traffic that require fast loading of pages.