Hi David,
Thank you for your great question. Awesome to hear about your new server setup!
As per your question to improve the Linux server performance specifically to run a faster website I would make sure the server is SSD storage based as an SSD storage method will drastically improve your website and servers IO performance. I would also make sure the 16GB is enough for your website if it seems like the server is using most of that RAM I would have that upgraded to prevent slow downs or even downtime.
As per specifically boosting your websites performance I would install and configure the following software:
* Litespeed Web Server
* If it is a CMS website like (Wordpress) I would install a cache software and if you do run Litespeed please note a free cache plugin is available
* Enable http/3 protocol & QUIC
* Minimize image size via compression
* Try to not use many redirects in the website as that will increase the first byte time
* Ensure enough bandwidth is available for your server (This most likely is already done by your hosting provider)
* Enable Gzip compression on the server (Please note this may use more RAM and or CPU power) but will increase website loading speed
* Defer parsing of JavaScript
* Leverage browser caching
* Specify a cache validator
* Serve scaled images
* Minify your CSS
* Minify your html
* Minify your Javascript
* Use a CDN service like Cloudflare
* Enable Keep Alive
* Make sure you have DDOS protection
Please I can't stress this enough make a backup for your current website or entire server before making any of these changes as in a bad situation you are good to go
.
If you can please post your website address so I can see on my end what can be done to boost it up happy to share my thoughts.
Thanks!
Mario Cano | Fusion Arc Hosting
Linux Systems Administrator