Web applications, in general, and Moodle, in particular, have very distinct application layers consisting of an operating system, web server, database server, and an application that's developed in a programming language. Each layer has its own idiosyncrasies when it comes to optimization. We will mainly focus on the application layer, which is the focus of this book.
The following areas are not dealt with in any detail in the following pages, and it is necessary to refer to the respective documentation with regard to performance and optimization issues:
Operating system performance: The choice of operating system and its configuration will have a major impact on how Moodle performs. In principle, Linux or any other Unix derivative performs better than any other operating system. PHP applications, such as Moodle, run significantly slower in a Windows environment than on Linux. Some aspects of this have been covered in Chapter 1, Moodle Installation...