Geoffrey Pyrzynski Is Improving The Performance Of The Joomla! CMS

Geoffrey Pyrzynski completed his research at UIC to help improve the performance of the Content Management System called Joomla. The research premiered at UIC's 2011 Student Research Forum from 1:00 to 3:00 PM on Tuesday, April 19th, 2011. The research was divided in two parts: what makes a well designed website and what makes a website perform well. Both of these sections are equally important to the website's performance. The design portion deals with human performance or interaction on the website while the other deals with speed and page load times of the site. The research was completed on geoffresh.com and was a combined effort from two colleges at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Geoffrey Pyrzynski from the College of Business Administration - Entrepreneurship and Mitchell D. Theys from the College of Engineering - Computer Science teamed up to explore what makes a Content Management System perform well on a shared server and to the human visitors. Below is the abstract for this research.

The amount of information available on the Internet is expanding at an exponential rate. Often the difference between a frequently visited site and a one-time-visit site is whether the site is well designed and gives the impression of responsiveness. But what separates a site that people are comfortable visiting often from the rest of the web? What are the characteristics or factors that contribute to a website's performance? This research was conducted on geoffresh.com that utilizes the Joomla Content Management System (CMS) for the sites infrastructure. The research explores component, module, and plugin upgrades; XHTML and CSS Validation; page load times; page generation times; and attributes of a well designed website. After performing speed test trials, updating and validating code, and redesigning the website, the research has shown that it is possible to use a CMS on a shared server (a more affordable solution) and have it perform comparable to a private server (a more expensive solution).

We have provided the research presentation poster for your viewing pleasure as well as a snapshot of the research. 

We also invite you to read the research paper on "How to Improve the Performance of Content Management Systems and the Web." 

Although this portion of the research has come to a close, Geoffrey will be continuing on to explore additional performance factors and design characteristics. One of the performance factors is a compression technique and a new home page design was just launched on geoffresh.com a few weeks ago that users are able to interact with and have a more enjoyable experience. This research will still continue and improve geoffresh.com and the web.