1C-Bitrix: Composite Website

It is no secret that every webmaster strives to make the website fast and convenient for users. The website's performance and the number of users depends on the website's loading speed. Besides, website loading speed is also important for search engines, since the lower the site's response, the higher it is ranked in search engine results.

There is no single approach to increasing the download speed. In the race for speed, you can conduct audits, optimize the website code, and choose a more powerful server or hosting. In this article, we will tell you about one of the ways to do this using the 1C-Bitrix «Composite website» technology, which allows you to reduce the website loading time by tens or even hundreds of times.

What is a «Composite website»?

The composite website is the result of combining html caching technology and ajax loading of information produced by 1C-Bitrix. The inclusion of this technology leads to the fact that a website is fast and convenient to use.

Let's consider the advantages of the technology:

• Convenience for website users. With composite, the website will open tens or even hundreds of times faster, which will reduce the number of rejections.
• Improved ranking in the search engine. The composite increases the website's chances of getting into the top results of the Yandex and Google search engines.
• Improved conversion rate. Simply put, the website starts to «fly», which makes it easier to navigate the website and increases conversion.

The «Composite site» technology is available in any of the existing versions of 1C-Bitrix: site Management.

The principle of operation of the composite

The technology divides pages into static and dynamic components during operation:

• The static part is cached on the server side, saved to the user's browser, and returned immediately. This page contains data that all website users can see: information pages, product pages, news lists, product categories on the main page, and so on.
• The dynamic part is loaded in the background after the page loads and is also cached by the browser. This is where data such as user information, shopping cart, prices, banners, etc. are loaded.

As a result of this separation, the page loads almost instantly. The user does not have to wait for the download. They will immediately see the page content and be able to perform any actions on the page, and an additional background query will load dynamic data.

The following image shows how you can use the «Composite website» technology to speed up website opening.

More information about how the «Composite website» technology works is written on the official website of Bitrix.

Do I need composite mode?

A composite site will be useful for a site of any complexity and topic. If the website is simple and returns the page quickly enough, there is no need to make it even faster. In other cases, a composite website is useful, especially if the site has heavy elements and images.

Как включить композит?

The procedure for enabling and checking the composite is best performed on a separate website, so as not to harm the work of users. The composite is enabled on the page: your-website/bitrix/admin/composite.php.

There are two modes of operation of the composite. To enable the composite, you can use the Autocomposite mode. This mode is convenient because you do not need to understand the deep meaning of the technology, configure something, and involve the developer to enable it. Bitrix automatically decides which page elements are static and which are dynamic. But sometimes it is wrong and it needs to be checked.

To check how the composite works, there is a plugin for Google Chrome Bitrix Composite Notifier. You can use it to quickly understand whether the composite is working or not. If the composite cache is running on a page, the plugin icon will turn green.

The second method of verification is through the browser's «Network» debugging panel with a «Doc» filter (as in the screenshot below).

To check how the composite works, go to the page with an anonymous tab and the debugger enabled and restart the page several times. If the composite works, then the two-hundredth status will change to three hundred and fourth on the second or third hit.

It is important to know that the composite does not work under the administrator, so you should check the composite in an anonymous tab or from another browser.

Ideally, the composite should work on all pages, except for the personal account and pages where data should not be cached. In other cases, you need to configure and finalizing the components.

Composite doesn't work

It is quite simple to enable the composite – with a single button. But most often this is not enough. If the website was created using a ready-made solution, then it is probably adapted to the composite. But in most cases, you need to hire a qualified developer to solve this problem.

For the composite to work correctly, you need to manually reconfigure all the output templates for website components and select dynamic areas in a special way. Sometimes enabling the composite causes JS scripts to work incorrectly and display errors.

The time it takes to set up and switch the website to composite mode depends on the complexity of the website and its size. It usually takes from a few hours to five days to configure the composite on the entire website. The entire complexity of the task rests on thorough testing, reconfiguring components and optimizing the code for the composite.

Conclusion

Composite website is a cool technology that meets the needs of modern websites. Using this technology, working with the website will become more pleasant, especially for users who come from mobile devices.

Enabling a composite requires the involvement of a developer in many cases. However, the result of using the technology will be noticeable in the first days.

If you have any questions about the composite or need to configure it, please contact us.

1C-Bitrix website maintenance