My biggest hesitation to use Gantry for all my new projects is my suspicion that Gantry adds a significant hit to performance. I understand the importance of using a hosting service that is tuned to Joomla, and I am doing that. What I’m trying to understand is what extra processing does Gantry add that affects performance.
I’m having a hard time wording my question, so let me try this… Are the parameter settings in Gantry “compiled” into the HTML/CSS/JS files once the settings are saved (e.g., a column width written to a CSS file), or are these settings handled for each page request by an extra processing layer on the server?
And if anyone has additional information about performance hits that come with using Gantry, please share. If there are articles or previous discussions on this topic, please point them out.
HTML/CSS and JS files are compiled and compressed by turning on the Gantry Zipper and Cache. With Panacea you also have the option of making the css file static instead of dynamic.
I'm currently updating a site to a Gantry based template and it's not taking a hit on load times at all.
The only place you'll really notice a drop in performance (IMO) is in the back end when you are changing your template settings, but once the site is how you want it, there's not much need for going back in there so it's only a minor inconvenience.