These slides show how stayzilla.com used nodejs to build a lightweight mobile website

1. Building a lightweight
mobile website using
nodejs

2. Motivation
● Integrate with a heavy php codebase
● Mobile first design

3. Techniques used

4. Non Blocking IO
● callbacks with Async waterfall & parallel
o parallel calls made to search api to speed up
performance

5. Clustering
● Launching a node process per core using
the node cluster module

6. Reuse of Templates/Views
● Handlebar templates reused on server side
and client side where required
o template to render search results is used both on the
server side and the client side
● More views rendered on client side for speed

7. Overlays
Use of overlays in checkout flow to increase
responsiveness

8. lightweight client side libraries
● zepto instead of jquery
● no css framework (all native)
● avoid heavy javascript plugins (take just
what is needed or write it yourself)
● loading scripts inline to speed up initial page
load time
● use of image sprites

9. Build/deployment
GruntJS used for builds
● JS/CSS minification & cache bursting
● RequireJS compiler
● SASS compiler

10. Traffic served
● An average of 3,500 unique visitors a day
● Loads in ~ 5s on a 3g connection