Question

What are some important optimizations that can be made to a website to reduce the loading time?

Answer 1

Remove/Minimize any bottlenecks on the server side. For this purpose, use a profiler like Xdebug or Zend Debugger to find out where your application is doing expensive and slow operations. Implement caching where possible. Use an OpCode Cache. If this still isn’t fast enough consider investing in more CPU or RAM or SSDs (depending on whether you are CPU, IO or Memory bound)

For general server/client side optimizations, see the Yahoo YSlow! User Guide.

It basically sums it up to:

1. Minimize HTTP Requests
2. Use a Content Delivery Network
3. Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
4. Gzip Components
5. Put StyleSheets at the Top
6. Put Scripts at the Bottom
7. Avoid CSS Expressions
8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
9. Reduce DNS Lookups
10. Minify JavaScript and CSS
11. Avoid Redirects
12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
13. Configure ETags
14. Make AJAX Cacheable
15. Use GET for AJAX Requests
16. Reduce the Number of DOM Elements
17. No 404s
18. Reduce Cookie Size
19. Use Cookie-Free Domains for Components
20. Avoid Filters
21. Do Not Scale Images in HTML
22. Make favicon.ico Small and Cacheable

Also see the comments contributed below, as they contain some additional useful information for other users.