7 октября 2019
Modern business is gradually moving to an electronic environment. This raises some questions:
- Will the project be able to work stably with a steep influx of visitors in the future?
- Will the website be able to withstand such loads and ensure continuous operation?
These questions become more relevant if you plan an advertising campaign and a steep influx of visitors. In this case, we recommend checking the possibility of increasing the load on the website in advance. As a result of such testing, you will be able to take appropriate measures in advance to increase the website's performance, choose the appropriate hosting, or change something in the project.
The quality of a website is determined by its speed and load resistance — these are the indicators that can guarantee the stable operation of the website when page traffic increases. If today the website can work stably when hundreds of users visit, then over time, with the growth of its traffic, problems may arise. Such problems may be caused by the server hosting restrictions or poor quality development approach. We recommend solving these problems at the initial stages of work.
Built-in performance testing tools
Bitrix has special tools for evaluating and analyzing the website. You can use them to make conclusions about the productiveness of the current server configuration, the 1C-Bitrix platform, and the quality of website development.
Performance Monitor module is used for website testing. It allows us to estimate metrics of the project's system configuration based on reference data and perform load testing. Based on the received data and recommendations, you can take steps to improve the website.
Конфигурация
Configuration performance testing makes it clear how much the server capacity matches the reference capacity.
To calculate the configuration score and average time, the speed of opening an empty page with the Bitrix core connected is measured. This estimate reflects the properties of the server, the integrity of the system software, the quality of the code in the handlers of events, and other connections.
With a score of 30-60 points, a website is more suitable for small projects and online stores. For more loaded online stores and projects, you will need 60-100 points. This rating is considered excellent for load-bearing.
Other configuration subsystems provide estimates that show where a particular problem might be hiding.
Битрикс
The Bitrix tab displays the testing results of the metrics that affect the performance of the Bitrix platform itself. If the setting can somehow increase performance, then the recommendations column will show notes and instructions for improving this setting.
For good performance here you should mainly pay attention to caching: auto-caching of components, cache storage, and managed cache.
Development
The Development tab allows you to evaluate the quality of development and understand which pages are the most loaded and consume the most server resources.
This tool provides the ability to conduct real-time monitoring on a working website. All you need to do is to enable time-based analytics and collect data about all the hits you've made. As a result, you can deduce which pages load the slowest, how many resources were spent to open the page, and what errors were made during development.
Load testing tool
In addition to monitoring tools, the Scalability tool stands out in the Performance Module. This is a load testing tool that is suitable for quick and easy assessment of website load resistance directly from the product interface.
Based on the output data of this tool, you can conclude how much the current website configuration and performance allows you to withstand loads. Besides, you can analyze the predictive assessment of increased load.
Recommendations for performance improvement
In addition to the fact that Bitrix is reliable, stable, and well-protected, it provides a large scope of functionality, including modules aimed at increasing performance.
Here are some recommendations for performance improvement:
- Activate the composite website. This is a website caching technology that will help you achieve a noticeable increase in website performance. However, for the composite website to work correctly, it is recommended to configure it correctly, together with the cache of components on the website itself;
- Upgrade to the PHP7 version. The new version of PHP will significantly reduce resource consumption and speed up the website;
- Activate the faceted search in the catalog. If there are about a thousand products on the website and there is a smart filter, we recommend activating faceted indexes. This will significantly speed up the operation of the smart filter;
- Disable unnecessary modules. We also recommend disabling unnecessary system modules and MarketPlace;
- Use the appropriate server configuration. A special Bitrix script is used to check the configuration.
If the project is large, the load is heavy and nothing helps, then there is an option to scale the project to multiple servers with the Scaling Management module. This module allows you to scale your website into a cluster, reducing the cost of configuration settings.
Conclusion
Therefore, the built-in 1C-Bitrix tools allow you to analyze the website speed, evaluate the current project configuration, and compare it with the required values. The built-in load testing tool answers questions about how the website will handle the load at the current performance level. This gives you an idea of what needs to be changed and optimized, how to make a decision, fix problems, and avoid losing users.
