Case Study All Work

Slow website no more

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A performance rescue for a Craft CMS site where some pages loaded so slowly the server would time out. After the work was done, PageSpeed scores went from the teens to 97.

  • Role: Solo developer — diagnostics, performance optimization, deployment, backups
  • Stack: Craft CMS, Vite, PHP, static page caching, server configuration
  • Client: Under NDA

The Problem

A client came to me with a well-designed Craft CMS site that had become unusably slow. Some pages wouldn’t load at all — the server would time out before returning a response. PageSpeed scores were in the teens and twenties.

What I did

The site was built with Craft CMS, which gave me a solid foundation to work with. I had the codebase and server access, so the diagnostic process was straightforward — identify every bottleneck and address them systematically:

  • Image optimization — reworked how images were processed and served
  • Template and code cleanup — updated legacy template code and eliminated inefficient queries
  • Static page caching — implemented a caching strategy that served most pages without hitting the application layer
  • Modern build tooling — configured Vite to replace the existing asset pipeline
  • Zero-downtime deployment — built a new deployment process so updates didn’t interrupt the live site
  • Automated daily backups — created a backup system that runs without manual intervention

Outcome

Pages that used to time out now load instantly. The PageSpeed score went from the teens to 97. We stopped at 97, not 100 — knowing when to stop is part of the job.

Why it matters

Performance rescue projects are a good test of diagnostic thinking. The site didn’t need a redesign or a platform change. It needed someone to methodically find what was slow, fix each issue, and set up infrastructure so the problems wouldn’t come back.

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