Caching Score: https://dfsvc.gov.au/

What is this check, and why should you care

Drupal 8+ provides an Internal Page Cache module that is recommended for small to medium-sized websites.

When you are not using a CDN or other caching service (such as Varnish) this module does provide benefits.

In order to get maximum points, you must enable the page_cache module.

See Drupal's documentation on the Internal Page Cache module. Also, Wim Leers wrote a really awesome blog post on the release of this module with important background.

Maximum possible points

20

What is this check, and why should you care

CSS aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.

Maximum possible points

10

What is this check, and why should you care

Javascript aggregation reduces the number of assets your site needs to download. The filename contains a hash of all the file contents, meaning you can cache these files for an extremely long time with no negative consequences.

Maximum possible points

10

What is this check, and why should you care

Drupal 9.5+ introduces a new debug setting to make it easier to debug render caching. This setting will add cache debugging output for each rendered element.

The main issue with this is that this slows down your page loads (on top increasing your page weight).

In order to get maximum points, you must disable the render cache debug.

Maximum possible points

10

What is this check, and why should you care

Drupal 7+ provides a Statistics module to which records content view statistics in Drupal's database.

The main issue with this module is that it sends an un-cacheable HTTP POST request to your site to record a 'content view' statistic. This does not scale well as you Drupal site gets more traffic.

In order to get maximum points, you must disable the statistics module.

Maximum possible points

10

What is this check, and why should you care

Drupal 8+ uses Twig for templating, and the Twig template engine offers a debug tool to which emits out a list of template filenames in the HTML source.

The main issue with this is that you often also have other Twig related performance issues as well, e.g. automatic reloading.

In order to get maximum points, you must disable Twig debug.

Maximum possible points

10

What is this check, and why should you care

There is a SPAM protection module in Drupal called Honeypot.

The honeypot module has a feature that adds a time based hidden form field to forms to protect against bots filling them in too quickly. This is a nice feature, however it happens to disable caching for the entire page. This is terrible for high traffic sites.

It is recommended to disable this time based feature, and only use the core honeypot feature of a hidden input field.

Maximum possible points

5

What is this check, and why should you care

There are 2 filesystems in Drupal - public files and private files.

Private files force Drupal to bootstrap in order to serve the file, and access control is checked every single time. This is useful for sensitive files, but a hindrance when your site is under high load.

It is recommended to use Drupal's public file system for static, non-sensitive files, and reserve the use of private files for dynamic, or sensitive files.

Maximum possible points

5

What is this check, and why should you care

The time that it takes for a user's browser to receive the first byte of page content.

The lower the TTFB, the faster your site will be perceived by the end user.

In order to get maximum points, your TTFB must be less than or equal to 30ms. If your TTFB is more than 1 second then you get no points here.

Maximum possible points

50

What is this check, and why should you care

Using a caching proxy is extremely useful for caching purposes.

Maximum possible points

50

What is this check, and why should you care

Using a CDN is extremely useful for caching purposes.

Maximum possible points

50

What is this check, and why should you care

Using ETag identifiers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. This mechanism allows caches to be more efficient and saves bandwidth, as a Web server does not need to send a full response if the content has not changed. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.

No ETag header was found in the response.

See the Wikipedia page on ETag for more background.

In order to get maximum points, you need to have ETag identifiers and an HTTP 304 response must be received when using a valid If-None-Match request header.

Maximum possible points

30

What is this check, and why should you care

Using Last-Modified headers is an easy way to ensure your visitors are always getting the most up-to-date version of the content. HTTP 304 responses are used to indicate this is working.

No Last-Modified header was found in the response.

Maximum possible points

30

What is this check, and why should you care

Caching HTTP 404s is a great way to offload requests from your origin.

In order to get maximum points, you need to have the ability to cache an HTTP 404 for any amount of time.

This check requested the URL https://dfsvc.gov.au/cachingscorebrokenurltest.

Maximum possible points

20