10 Ways to Speed up Magento’s Admin/Backend

Magento, the feature-rich, open-source eCommerce platform is all set to revolutionize eCommerce.

It offers merchants unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their online stores. The platform offers powerful and completely scalable SEO, marketing, and catalog-management tools, enabling merchants to create custom sites perfectly tailored to their needs.

However, using Magento is not as simple as installing it and clicking go.

One problem faced by many Magento users is an extremely slow admin panel or backend. Here are ten ways to do something about this issue, and leverage Magento to the maximum.

1. Use a Magento-optimized server:

Magento, while offering path-breaking features, has intense requirements that come with itm, and running the Magento store on a generic server could cause performance issues, and slow page loads. Magento recommends a standard configuration of two web nodes and one database server. This has to be configured and optimized properly, with enhanced caching. This, combined with software accelerators such as Nginx and Varnish, will result in greater data processing capacity, supporting 350+ million catalog views, and more than 487,000 orders a day.

2. Minimize the use of extensions:

Magento offers a host of extensions. However, each new extension makes the store heavier, making it harder to maintain, update, and load. Keep extensions to the bare minimum, and make a trade-off between the added functionality that the extension would provide, and speed. Edit the template files or use default features as alternatives to adding more extensions, wherever possible.

 3. Enable cache:

Enabling cache allows the system to retrieve previously accessed items easily, without having to reinvent-the-wheel every time. For the best cache settings, go to System > Cache Management and enable all cache types. Tick on Configurations, Layouts, Block HTML Output and Translations options. Untick Collections Data, EAV Types & Attributes, and Web Services Configuration. This is the most simple way to speed up Magento’s admin panel.

4. Use a memory-based filesystem for Magento’s var directory:

Magento uses file-based storage extensively for session storage and caching. The slowest component in this process is the hard drive. Using a memory-based file system such as tmpfs results in the temporary files being stored in memory instead of the slow hard drive, sparing the backend from the extra disk IO cycles.

5. Re-index data:

Indexing makes it easy for the system to search and fetch the requested data. As such, regularly indexing Magento data will have a positive impact on performance. Go to System > Index Management, select all indexes, and hit “Reindex Data” submit button.

6. Enable JavaScript file merging:

Go to System > Configuration > Developer > JavaScript Settings > Merge JavaScript Files, and select “Yes”. This option combines all JavaScript files into one, reducing the number of HTTP requests that the Magento site makes to the server. It improves speed greatly.

7. Combine CSS files:

Go to System > Configuration > Developer > CSS Sttings > Merge CSS Fles, and select “Yes.” Combining all JavaScript files into one will reduce load time, and increase speed.

8. Enable compilation:

Go to System > Tools > Compilation, and hit “Run Compilation Process”. Magento’s compilation tool speeds up a production installation.

9. Turn off the logs:

Go to System > Configuration > Developer > Log Settings. Turn off all logs on a production Magento installation, so that the system does not have to waste time with it. This however, may become counterproductive when troubleshooting, – spare this option for the last, only when you are sure of your stuff.

10. Use a minimalist theme:

Magento offers hundreds of themes. Using a minimalist theme means much lesser elements to process.

Magento is the ultimate eCommerce solution, but the full benefits are realized only when used the right way.