What is Time to First Byte and How to Improve It
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 10:58 am
What is Time to First Byte and How to Improve It
You may have heard the phrase “ Time to First Byte” , but for some reason the concept seems to be a bit confusing to some people. Whether it’s because it seems incredibly technically oriented, or because it seems like an abstract concept that’s not that important to everyday use. Nothing could be further from the truth. Time to First Byte is not a concept or idea that only techies should understand. Everyone should be able to understand its meaning and apply it in practice. In this article, I’m going to explain to you in a few words what Time to First Byte is, how it impacts your site , and why you should pay close attention singapore b2b leads
to it if you want to provide your readers with the best possible browsing experience on your site.
Contents hide
1 What is Time to First Byte?
2 What factors influence time to first byte?
2.1 DNS response time
2.2 Server Configuration
2.3 Plugins and WordPress Theme
2.4 HTML Caching
3 Time to First Byte Case Studies: Why It Matters
3.1 Slow website on a slow server
3.2 Fast website on average server
3.3 Very slow website on a fast server
3.4 Fast website on a fast server
3.5 Control results
4 Summing up
4.1 Related publications:
What is Time to First Byte?
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is a measurement used to measure the responsiveness of a web server or other network resource. TTFB measures the time from when a user or client sends an HTTP request until the client browser receives the first byte of the page. This time is made up of the socket connection time, the time it takes to send the HTTP request, and the time it takes to receive the first byte of the page. Although sometimes mistakenly thought to be a post-DNS calculation, the original TTFB calculation in networking always includes network latency when measuring the time it takes for a resource to start loading. That's the "technical" explanation, taken directly from Wikipedia. Now let's translate it into a simpler, more user-friendly one.
Time to First Byte is the time it takes from the moment you click the button to load a website until it starts rendering. In gaming terms, Time to First Byte can be compared to the “latency” or “lag” you experience while playing a game. Latency is a direct indicator of how responsive your website is.
What factors influence time to first byte?
Time to First Byte can be affected by a number of factors, but since this is a WordPress article , we'll boil it down to what is affected by having WordPress.
DNS response time
Server Configuration and Performance ( PHP and Web Server)
Plugins/WordPress Theme
HTML caching enabled/disabled
Each of these factors adds an additional latency to the time it takes for your site to start rendering. This means that it all adds up . It’s not that some of these factors can affect latency, all of these factors contribute to increased latency! So you can assume that in an ideal scenario, everything should be fast so that you get a very good Time to First Byte, and if something in the chain takes longer to process, your final Time to First Byte will suffer. This is important because Time to First Byte affects everything you or your readers do on your site. Every time a reader clicks on a link, image, blog post, or page, Time to First Byte will be factored in. You can see that a bad Time to First Byte means that the reader will be in a situation similar to a gamer connected to a bad server. Every click will be accompanied by a significant delay, which will affect the experience . Note: From now on I will use the abbreviation TTFB to mean Time to First Byte to speed things up a bit.
DNS response time
DNS resolution is the first factor in the equation. Always make sure to use good DNS servers and that they have nodes scattered around the world to get the best resolution. A good way to reduce TTFB at this stage is to use a good global service like CloudFlare , as this type of service implements global DNS caching. This method is extremely good at reducing TTFB by caching subsequent resolutions.
]
Server Configuration
The second step in TTFB latency is the actual server . This is where your hosting comes into play . The type of web server configuration it uses and the caching methods it uses will significantly reduce the TTFB. For example, if your server is using an old PHP 5.4 interpreter, you will get a very high TTFB latency, whereas using a modern PHP 7.1 configuration will reduce this time by 2 times or more. This is because the PHP interpreter plays an important role in the process. Every time you request a website page or a blog post that is not cached , the server needs to process the PHP files to convert them into HTML format and return them to your browser. The more complex the PHP files are, the more time it will take to pre-process them and send them back to the browser . You can see that the server performance also plays an important role in the whole process. The faster the processor and the more resources your hosting allocates to you, the faster it will process these files , and therefore your TTFB will be lower. Additionally, if your hosting has PHP caching implemented, then the second request will reduce this time even more, as it will serve a cached version of the file instead of processing the PHP file again. Now you see that there are 2 types of hosting : shared (no caching) and WordPress-exclusive, which usually implements a caching mechanism for PHP , reducing the TTFB in the process.
WordPress Plugins and Theme
The third step in the TTFB equation is your actual site. This is the most important factor, and I'm going to show you why. WordPress typically gives your host multiple PHP files to process, and the more complex they are, the longer it will take to process. WordPress is powered by plugins , and these plugins add extra code to the final PHP processing, so with that in mind, you can clearly see that the more plugins you have installed, the longer it will take your host to process them , and therefore your TTFB will increase.
Less is more . As a general rule, fewer plugins are better. Of course, one poorly configured plugin can be much worse than 10 well-configured plugins, or you can install two plugins that conflict. But in general, reducing the number of plugins
You may have heard the phrase “ Time to First Byte” , but for some reason the concept seems to be a bit confusing to some people. Whether it’s because it seems incredibly technically oriented, or because it seems like an abstract concept that’s not that important to everyday use. Nothing could be further from the truth. Time to First Byte is not a concept or idea that only techies should understand. Everyone should be able to understand its meaning and apply it in practice. In this article, I’m going to explain to you in a few words what Time to First Byte is, how it impacts your site , and why you should pay close attention singapore b2b leads
to it if you want to provide your readers with the best possible browsing experience on your site.
Contents hide
1 What is Time to First Byte?
2 What factors influence time to first byte?
2.1 DNS response time
2.2 Server Configuration
2.3 Plugins and WordPress Theme
2.4 HTML Caching
3 Time to First Byte Case Studies: Why It Matters
3.1 Slow website on a slow server
3.2 Fast website on average server
3.3 Very slow website on a fast server
3.4 Fast website on a fast server
3.5 Control results
4 Summing up
4.1 Related publications:
What is Time to First Byte?
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is a measurement used to measure the responsiveness of a web server or other network resource. TTFB measures the time from when a user or client sends an HTTP request until the client browser receives the first byte of the page. This time is made up of the socket connection time, the time it takes to send the HTTP request, and the time it takes to receive the first byte of the page. Although sometimes mistakenly thought to be a post-DNS calculation, the original TTFB calculation in networking always includes network latency when measuring the time it takes for a resource to start loading. That's the "technical" explanation, taken directly from Wikipedia. Now let's translate it into a simpler, more user-friendly one.
Time to First Byte is the time it takes from the moment you click the button to load a website until it starts rendering. In gaming terms, Time to First Byte can be compared to the “latency” or “lag” you experience while playing a game. Latency is a direct indicator of how responsive your website is.
What factors influence time to first byte?
Time to First Byte can be affected by a number of factors, but since this is a WordPress article , we'll boil it down to what is affected by having WordPress.
DNS response time
Server Configuration and Performance ( PHP and Web Server)
Plugins/WordPress Theme
HTML caching enabled/disabled
Each of these factors adds an additional latency to the time it takes for your site to start rendering. This means that it all adds up . It’s not that some of these factors can affect latency, all of these factors contribute to increased latency! So you can assume that in an ideal scenario, everything should be fast so that you get a very good Time to First Byte, and if something in the chain takes longer to process, your final Time to First Byte will suffer. This is important because Time to First Byte affects everything you or your readers do on your site. Every time a reader clicks on a link, image, blog post, or page, Time to First Byte will be factored in. You can see that a bad Time to First Byte means that the reader will be in a situation similar to a gamer connected to a bad server. Every click will be accompanied by a significant delay, which will affect the experience . Note: From now on I will use the abbreviation TTFB to mean Time to First Byte to speed things up a bit.
DNS response time
DNS resolution is the first factor in the equation. Always make sure to use good DNS servers and that they have nodes scattered around the world to get the best resolution. A good way to reduce TTFB at this stage is to use a good global service like CloudFlare , as this type of service implements global DNS caching. This method is extremely good at reducing TTFB by caching subsequent resolutions.
]
Server Configuration
The second step in TTFB latency is the actual server . This is where your hosting comes into play . The type of web server configuration it uses and the caching methods it uses will significantly reduce the TTFB. For example, if your server is using an old PHP 5.4 interpreter, you will get a very high TTFB latency, whereas using a modern PHP 7.1 configuration will reduce this time by 2 times or more. This is because the PHP interpreter plays an important role in the process. Every time you request a website page or a blog post that is not cached , the server needs to process the PHP files to convert them into HTML format and return them to your browser. The more complex the PHP files are, the more time it will take to pre-process them and send them back to the browser . You can see that the server performance also plays an important role in the whole process. The faster the processor and the more resources your hosting allocates to you, the faster it will process these files , and therefore your TTFB will be lower. Additionally, if your hosting has PHP caching implemented, then the second request will reduce this time even more, as it will serve a cached version of the file instead of processing the PHP file again. Now you see that there are 2 types of hosting : shared (no caching) and WordPress-exclusive, which usually implements a caching mechanism for PHP , reducing the TTFB in the process.
WordPress Plugins and Theme
The third step in the TTFB equation is your actual site. This is the most important factor, and I'm going to show you why. WordPress typically gives your host multiple PHP files to process, and the more complex they are, the longer it will take to process. WordPress is powered by plugins , and these plugins add extra code to the final PHP processing, so with that in mind, you can clearly see that the more plugins you have installed, the longer it will take your host to process them , and therefore your TTFB will increase.
Less is more . As a general rule, fewer plugins are better. Of course, one poorly configured plugin can be much worse than 10 well-configured plugins, or you can install two plugins that conflict. But in general, reducing the number of plugins