The concept of Big Data is not new and it has been taking the e-commerce realm by storm. It has enabled online retailers to judge the demands of customers by observing their previous purchase behaviour.
No wonder so many e-commerce owners are approaching us with Big Data projects as they want to leverage it for gaining competitive advantage. One of our clients approached us with a mediocre Drupal e-commerce website for optimizing it for Big Data.
Being a Drupal development company, we are proficient in enhancing performance for Drupal websites overcoming all the challenges that comes in the way. In today’s post we would discuss about how to improve performance in a Drupal 8 website, let’s first discuss about the importance of Big Data for our new readers.
Big Data, as we know, means a large volume of data that is collected, stored and analyzed through different means to get actionable insights which can be utilized by your organization to make informed decision and to increase efficiency.
Big data can be understood via three dimensions called the 3Vs of Big Data – volume, velocity and variety.
Volume – Today enterprises are aflood with ever-increasing data of all types, amassing even petabytes of information. The data sources include social media, business transactions, sensor data and information from various devices.
Velocity – The Big data must be used as it streams, especially for time-sensitive processes such as detecting fraud. Also data must be analyzed in real-time in order to maximize its value.
Variety – Data can come in any format that may be structured or unstructured like sensor data, text, audio, video, log files, etc. When these data are analyzed together, new insights are found.
The importance of Big Data revolves around how efficiently you can utilize your data and open doors to endless possibilities. Big Data can help you:
You know that how important it is to enhance the performance of your website prior to leveraging Big Data for your e-commerce website. Let’s find out how our team of Drupal Specialists improved the performance of a Drupal 8 e-commerce website.
A multi-vendor e-commerce site will have colossal of data in terms of products and product categories, search volumes, traffic, etc. So, it is very important that you make sure that your website doesn’t break down when there is high traffic.
There are specific modules, tools and techniques in Drupal 8 for performance optimization, the popular technique among them is caching.
Caching is a process of storing web data (HTML, CSS, images) or readable content in some accessible space called cache memory when a user requests for web page content on your site for the first time. As a result, on subsequent requests of the same page, the loading of web page is faster as the stored data is retrieved and displayed to users.
In Drupal websites, the data is primarily cached within the database.
Our team of Drupal development experts suggests that firstly make sure that “Internal Dynamic Page Cache” and “Internal Page Cache” are installed. Once installed ensure that they are enabled by default as shown in the screenshot below:
Internal Dynamic Page Cache: This module is used to cache for any user, anonymous as well as logged in user.
Internal Page Cache: If you want to have “Add to Cart” functionality for guest or anonymous users in your e-commerce website then you can use this core module.
Page cache maximum age: This module is for setting the maximum time you want your browser to keep the cached information. By default, this module is set to “No caching”; you have to change it as per your requirement. See screenshot below:
Bandwidth optimization: By choosing aggregate CSS and JavaScript files under “Bandwidth Optimization” setting, you make sure that the number of HTTP requests is reduced when a page loads. Instead of loading a lot of files, only a few aggregates are loaded.
Moreover, if you find that “Bandwidth Optimization” is always in a disabled state with closed radio buttons and you can’t enable them then you would need to go to /admin/settings/file-system first and then set your file system path. After that set Download method to “Public” then you would surely be able to aggregate CSS and JavaScript files.
Now we would present some of the techniques that control the interaction of Drupal CMS with an external cache. Here’s how it can be done by using the following modules:
“Drupal can do everything you can dream of.” – Dries Buytaert
Yes, aptly said by Dries Buytaert that Drupal can help you realize your dreams. You might be also interested to know how to develop futuristic web applications with Drupal.
To make your database ready for Big Data implementation, integration, optimization and maintenance, we would suggest using MariaDB instead of MySQL in addition to introducing programs like Varnish and Redis.
MariaDB converts data into structured information in many different web applications. There are several benefits of MariaDB when it comes to performance and features, for instance, better storage engines. Besides, it supports TokuDB that in turn handles big data for large enterprises and corporate users.
In MariaDB, database engines Aria and XtraDB replaces MySQL’s MyISAM and InnoDB respectively. Aria allows better caching in terms of disk-intensive operations. When it comes to high load environments, Percona’s XtraDB eliminates all the InnoDB issues with stability and slow performance. In order to speed up queries too temporary tables use Aria.
Although Apache HTTP server is one of the most popular open source web servers powering the web for the past two decades, it has its own limitations when it comes to handling sites with higher traffic levels and also websites with richer web pages.
Moreover, with minimal resources NGINX can manage a large number of concurrent users and that too consuming lesser memory than Apache.
You must be witnessing significant changes in the way web applications are built today using microservices and lightweight frameworks like Node.js and others in order to achieve faster time-to-market. And NGINX being lightweight becomes a better choice for containerized services than Apache monolith.
Drupal 8 undoubtedly provides a scalable and flexible foundation for e-commerce websites. Are you interested to optimize your Drupal e-commerce website? Collaborate with our e-commerce development experts to transform your dream project into a reality. You can also start a conversation with them or initiate a healthy discussion by leaving your comments below.
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