Drupal Performance Checklist
A repeatable checklist for caches, BigPipe, assets, images, databases, and evidence-based tuning.
Performance work should begin with measurement and cache correctness. A fast uncached request is useful; a correctly cached request that never repeats expensive work is better.
Verify the cache layers
Confirm Internal Page Cache, Dynamic Page Cache, and render caching are enabled and effective. BigPipe improves perceived performance for pages containing uncacheable placeholders. Audit cache contexts before adding broad max-age exceptions.
Control the payload
Aggregate and compress assets in production, remove unused libraries, use responsive image styles, set intrinsic image dimensions, and lazy-load below-the-fold media. A CDN helps only after cache headers and invalidation are correct.
Measure the backend
Inspect slow queries, indexes, external calls, queue work, and PHP profiling. Move non-interactive work out of the request, but keep queue jobs observable and idempotent.
Key Takeaways
- Measure before and after every optimization.
- Fix cache metadata instead of disabling caches.
- Optimize images and asset delivery alongside PHP.