Make sure to have some kind of cache setup - if you have a lot of content that is static, try to keep it cached so that strain on the DB, etc., is lowered.

Of course, you have to have a fair amount of traffic before you hit that point, but can definitely improve things.

In some of my sites, I use PHP's Output Control Functions [us3.php.net], and strip all the cruft from the stream, so it is one big, long ugly line with no comments or extra whitespace.

I tried to use a lot of caches, I have used JPcache, functional ones, block ones and many more, now I have my own cache system to make it faster.

I was wondering what the best sites do to get a faster rendering. I like Google as they are really fast, any idea on how Google process their pages?

I really want to ask stupid questions to learn all things to make my site faster, from HTML optimization to akamai servers. Is there a good book(s) on these topics.

Thanks,
Aji

I design all sites in pure css. When the whole page visually is crammed full of graphics and text but the html is less than 100 lines you know your onto a winner :)

Any idea about CSS sprites?

There is another optimization available at [webmasterworld.com...]