Best Practices

Design

• Choose the most suitable technology (#1)
• Use a framework or custom build (#2)
• Choose a design that is simple, clear and tailored to the web (#5)
• Use as few plugins as possible (#24)
• Allow for quick navigation through the history (#28)
• Adapt videos to the viewing environment (#92)
• Adapt sounds to the listening environment (#95)
• Compress documents (#97)
• Optimize PDFs (#98)
• Adapt text for the web (#100)
• Remove duplicate email addresses before sending (#102)
• Only use double opt-in email addresses (#103)
• Use plain text instead of HTML (#104)
• Remove non-essential features (#109)
• Precisely specify the need (#110)
• Improve the process flow (#111)
• Employ asynchronous processing when possible (#112)
• Limit the number of HTTP requests (#180)
• Use input help instead of autocomplete (#204)

Development

• Favor static pages (#3)
• Use performance-orientated forks of applications (#4)
• Externalize CSS files and JavaScript (#7)
• Split CSS (#9)
• Minimize the number of CSS files and compress them (#10)
• Favor CSS over images (#11)
• Provide a print style sheet (#16)
• Use conditional comments (#17)
• Generate CSS sprite sheets (#18)
• Use standard typefaces (#19)
• Delete image tags with empty SRC attributes (#23)
• Use functions instead of strings as the argument of setTimeout() and setInterval() (#26)
• Avoid for...in loops (#29)
• Avoid using try...catch...finally (#30)
• Use primitive operations (#31)
• Keep DOM access via JavaScript to a minimum (#32)
• Cache objects repeatedly accessed by JavaScript (#33)
• Check JavaScript code (#35)
• Favor instant visual changes (#36)
• Use local variables (#37)
• Use anonymous functions (#38)
• Make the most of string concatenation (#39)
• Use Ajax for content sections that are frequently updated (#40)
• Keep repaint (appearance) and reflow (layout) to a minimum (#42)
• Do not modify the DOM when traversing (#43)
• Make DOM elements invisible during modification (#44)
• Cache frequently-used calculated data (#47)
• Use static variables (#48)
• Free up the memory of variables that are no longer needed (#49)
• Do not call a function in the declaration of a for loop (#50)
• Remove all warnings and notices (#51)
• Avoid rewriting getter/setter natives (#53)
• Do not unnecessarily assign values to variables (#54)
• Avoid running SQL queries inside a loop (#55)
• Only connect to a database if necessary (#56)
• Never write SELECT * FROM (#57)
• Use stored procedures (#58)
• Limit the number of results (#59)
• Use all the CMS' levels of caching (#60)
• Use a templating engine (#61)
• Use single quotes (') instead of double (“) (#62)
• Replace $i++ with ++$i (#63)
• Cache the bytecode (#64)
• Resize images outside of the browser (#93)
• Resize images outside of the CMS (#94)
• Encode sound outside of the CMS (#96)
• Generate PDFs outside of the CMS (#99)
• Choose a suitable data format (#113)
• Create a modular application architecture (#114)
• Avoid using bitmap images for the interface (#161)
• Keep the number of domains serving resources to a minimum (#170)
• Avoid expensive JavaScript/CSS animations (#810)

Hosting

• Minify CSS files (#12)
• Optimize bitmaps (#21)
• Avoid redirections (#45)
• Do not generate 404 pages (#46)
• Choose a 'green' web host (#66)
• Use 'green' electricity (#67)
• Maximize the energy efficiency of servers (#68)
• Choose servers with SSD storage (#69)
• Use virtual servers (#70)
• Store data in the cloud (#71)
• Use a reverse proxy (#72)
• Only install essential components on the server (#74)
• Use a CDN (#75)
• Use an asynchronous server (#77)
• Add Expires or Cache-Control headers (#78)
• Compress the HTML output (#79)
• Use ETags (#80)
• Disable Apache's AllowOverride directive (#81)
• Disable some web server access logs (#82)
• Disable MySQL and MariaDB binary logs (#83)
• Disable Apache's DNS Lookup (#84)
• Only use in-memory caching (#85)
• Minify JavaScript files (#88)
• Minimize the use of SSL certificates (#90)
• Cache Ajax responses (#91)
• Adapt the quality of service and the service level agreement (#501)
• Only use the essential sections of JavaScript and CSS libraries (#811)