For any dynamic website, if it is not the performance of the network/server, database queries are usually the source of performance issues.

They should be optimized for sure and minimized with the help of caching.

phpFastCache is an open source PHP caching library that comes as a single-file and can be integrated so quickly.

It has support for multiple caching methods (apc, memcache, memcached, wincache, files, pdo and mpdo), the period of caching can be defined and has a very simplified API.

Drawing anything using modern web technologies is possible, however, the default APIs are not that user-friendly.

Two.js is an exciting JavaScript library that provides a 2-dimensional and single drawing API for SVG, Canvas And WebGL.

The library has only (currently) support for shapes (no text or images) and allows importing SVG data.

It can group multiple elements which is useful when transforming them together.

There is a built-in animation loop, methods to draw well-known shapes and lots of options to customize them.

Web apps are taking the places of desktop apps and the same is happening to our development tools as well.

ICEcoder is an open source and web-based IDE that is built with PHP and works fast.

It works by simply dropping its app folder to anywhere we prefer and any files there (and inside subfolders) are ready to be edited.

The syntax of the code is highlighted, broken tags and HTML structure are displayed + allows selecting them easily.

There is support for Emmet and comes bundled with Adminer (for managing MySQL).

ICEcoder has a powerful JavaScript API for easily interacting with it and it works with many popular languages (PHP, JS, CSS, LESS, Ruby, etc.).

iio Engine is an open source framework for creating HTML5 applications with JavaScript and canvas.

The framework is lightweight (45kb) and packed with a debugging system + cross-platform deployment engine.

It doesn’t require any JS frameworks and can work side-by-side with Box2D.

iio Engine’s website provides a full documentation and many examples to simplify development.

Today, HTTP requests are used widely in websites as we fetch data using APIs, get screenshots or AJAX requests.

Unirest is a pack of lightweight HTTP libraries for many languages (PHP, Ruby, Python, Java And Objective-C).

It has support for GET, POST, PUT, UPDATE, DELETE operations and its methods + response structure are the same in all languages.

The usage is very simple and straightforward. Also, it is documented well.

FPS meters are used to measure and visualize the “frames per second” values that are heavily used in games, live video connections, etc.

FPSMeter is an open source JavaScript library that simplifies integrating such a meter on any page that looks really nice.

It can measure the fps, number of milliseconds between each frame and number of milliseconds it takes to render one frame.

The library is standalone, themable and comes with options to define the interval, smoothing or enabling fps/ms switching.

Mozilla has announced a new and proof-of-concept web service, named TowTruck, for collaborating on the web so easily.

It works by simply inserting a line of JavaScript to webpages and a button to initiate the collaboration.

Once activated, a unique link is generated, it can be shared with any number of users and users visiting that link auto-join to the session.

The session allows users to author, browse, chat and voice-chat on the page all together.

In real life, it can be very useful while working with teammates, discussing stuff related to a webpage with clients and more.

Although TowTruck is totally free to use, it is also open source in case you prefer to host and/or improve it.

Whoops is a PHP library for handling errors and debugging them much easily.

The library provides stack-based error handling with a good-looking error interface.

It has a simple API for dealing with exceptions, trace frames + their data and can integrate with any framework (ready-to-use integrations exist for end and Silex).

Whoops has no dependencies to run and has the ability to open referenced files directly in your editor and IDE.

The 1st of April is getting very close and I’m sure we’ll see lots of fake news or fun stuff going around on websites that day.

For anyone willing to implement a quick joke to their websites, Fool.js, a jQuery plugin reaches to help.

The plugin can feature various jokes including “falling scrollbar”, “displaying annoying videos”, “hiding random elements”, “turning the page upside down” and more.

All of these can be called with a single jQuery function that can be attached to any event.

There is also a pure CSS alternative: aprilFools.css which can again perform some crazy stuff.

You already know Google Pagespeed, a pack of tools and services for optimizing the performance of websites.

And, they have a widely-used module named mod_pagespeed that auto-applies the best performance practices to Apache-hosted websites.

There is now a Windows alternative for it, IISpeed, that is free and offers the same feature set.

It is capable of minifying, rewriting and combining JavaScript + CSS files, optimizing + auto-spriting images and many other stuff provided by Pagespeed.

IISpeed is installed on the server level and it is compatible with IIS 7,7.5 and 8.