Need all JavaScript and Images to be local

Page 3 is the most telling (which is where I think you're looking already). The blue line is generally the line you need to hit for under 4s. On your graph, it was at about 2.5s. I just ran your page through GTMetrix and the blue line was at almost 7s.

On both charts, the first line is really the problem. Yours is 2.32s and mine is 4.25s. That's the time your server is taking to simply process the request and send the 1st byte of data back to the user. Google recommends 200ms (which is frankly impossible for most sites). I try to keep our site at/around 1s.

A re-test of the page showed at 5.9s time, which should normally go down due to server-side caching improvements on the repeat load.

The causes of longer server generation time are:
* Too many plugins enabled
* Too many Joomla or component features enabled
* Server configuration in general. If you're on a very low-cost host (<$5/month), then the resources your site gets will be extremely limited. You may want to consider a hosting plan with a little more oomph

As for the Facebook Javascript, that's being loaded after the blue line. It's good to have that load faster, but again, there really isn't anything you can do about that as it's really on Facebook's end to serve it up fast.. and they are definitely doing everything they can to do so.

Alex

The IP fix is mainly for your logs. It's good to have, since, without it, all your visitors will look like they are using CloudFlare IPs. However, it won't have any performance impact, either positive or negative.

I hope you make some progress on things. In general, I'd recommend disabling everything on your site that isn't a core-Joomla features. Then, test again. If things are zippier, start re-enabling features one at a time to hopefully determine the culprit(s).

All the best,
Alex

I wouldn't touch Drupal, if I were you. I'm not sure what your traffic is, but scaling is relative. Joomla can handle hundreds of thousands of requests per day. Drupal is useful for investigating if you're getting into millions of visits per day.

As for K2, that file is big.. however, file size overhead of CSS and Javascript is not what you need to focus on. The problem is the server processing of PHP files to generate the HTML that is sent back to the user. That is taking 7s sometimes. The CSS file is transferred to the user *after* the HTML is delivered to them. There is simply some PHP code that is taking too long *or* your server is too slow. Since you're using CloudAccess, even on their cheap plan, 7s is no where near normal. Some other *functionality* on your site is causing the slowdown.

I'd really recommend the steps above to disable PHP code on your site, starting with system plugins, and narrow it down that way. Pruning CSS and JS files will not improve the 7s HTML rendering time whatsoever.

Sounds great. I hope all goes well for you. As always, if you need anything else, just let us know.

Thanks,
Alex