You can enhance the performance of hosted websites by applying the optimal PHP and nginx settings. As a result, the websites’ pages will load faster.

We called this feature “Performance Booster”, and it is available only to the Plesk administrator. At the moment, you enable the feature individually for each website.

To enhance a website’s performance:

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > Performance Booster (under “General Settings”).

  2. Click the name of the website whose performance you want to enhance.

  3. Select the “Speed up web server”, “Set optimized PHP settings”, and “Switch to modern PHP version (Plesk PHP-FPM 8.1)” checkboxes, and then click Apply.

    Note: Depending on the website settings, some checkboxes may be disabled. Learn more in the section below.

image performance booster

Once you have optimized the PHP and/or nginx settings of the website, you will see the image performance booster icon icon under the “Web server” and/or “PHP” columns.

“Web server” and “PHP” are shown as optimized when “Speed up web server” and “Set optimized PHP settings” are enabled, respectively. The “PHP” status does not depend on the “Switch to modern PHP version (Plesk PHP-FPM 8.1)” option.

Note: The websites’ optimization status on the “Performance Booster” screen may not always be up to date. To update the status of all websites, click Refresh domains status.

Note: If you enabled “Speed up web server” and then manually updated /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/conf/nginx.conf, the image performance booster icon icon under the “Web server” column will not disappear (as it should). Clicking the Refresh domains status button will not update the web server optimization status either. To update the status, disable the “Speed up web server” option manually. You can then turn on the option again if you want to optimize the web server.

Optimization Settings Prerequisites

The “Speed up web server” option is available when both of the following conditions are met:

  • Hosting of the website is enabled.
  • nginx is installed and enabled on the server.

The “Set optimized PHP settings” option is available when all the following conditions are met:

  • Hosting of the website is enabled
  • “Hosting settings management” and “Common PHP settings management” are allowed in the hosting plan the website belongs to.
  • The panel.ini file has no predefined defaults in the [php] section. For more information, see Customizing PHP Parameters.

The “Switch to modern PHP version (Plesk PHP-FPM 8.1)” option is available when all the following conditions are met:

  • Hosting of the website is enabled.
  • PHP 8.1 is installed on the server.
  • PHP version selected for the website is earlier than 8.1.
  • When the “PHP version and handler management” permission is allowed in the hosting plan the website belongs to.
  • The “8.1.18 FPM application” handler is enabled in Tools & Settings > PHP Settings (under “General Settings”).