/motif has powerful features built-in that can reduce the load time of your website dramatically (70-80% speed increase in some cases). By utilizing gzip compression on your JavaScript and CSS files, all of your CSS or JavaScript files are combined into one, minified file that takes considerably less time for a visitor to download than all of the multiple files you may be loading.
Additionally, /motif has the ability to cache, or store fast-retrieving versions, files for a specific amount of time. Since JavaScript and CSS files don't change often once a site is launched, enabling and increasing the cache period for your JavaScript and CSS files will speed up your site even more.
All /motif-enabled templates include these features: whether you build your own template with the /motif framework or if you purchase a /motif-powered template, these features are available to you.
To enable the gzip compression on your CSS or JavaScript files, log into your Joomla! site's administration. Go to 'Extensions' > 'Template Manager' and click on the name of your /motif-powered template to edit it. In the template parameters column, find the "Compress CSS" and "Compress JavaScript" options. Setting them to "Yes" will enable gzip compression for the CSS and JavaScript, respectively.
To enable the caching of your CSS and JavaScript files, access your template parameters through the Template Manager as well. Find the "Cache Time in Secs" parameter and enter the time, in seconds, that you want /motif to cache your files. Example: "3600" = 1 hour. "86400" = 1 day.
