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Delivering WordPress in 7kb

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Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Just got back from Googling.) So basically, if the content can be sent within the window then you save a roundtrip?

It depends on if you're loading from multiple origins (multiple TCP connections), HTTP 1.1 vs 2 (multiplexing, push, HOL blocking), but generally speaking: yes. If you can fit the content needed to render the page in the initial TCP congestion window, the page will be noticeably faster on high-latency connections. This unfortunately means, for most websites, some amount of CSS in a style tag in the head to get a basi…

Thanks for the explanation!

I have done things on my site like inlining CSS and minimizing requests because it feels fast, without knowing exactly why. I didn't know that a single request can actually have multiple round trips!

My WordPress homepage is 2.4kb gzipped and just a single request :) so it is fast but its, uhh, a little boring and only 158 words.

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#33
I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't sacrifice in the same ways this site does: it keeps readable source code, it still uses BEM classes for maintainability, and it has a working menu on the same page (rather than requiring visitors to load a seperate menu page).

So, with less than half the kilobytes, I have a more readable, usable, and maintainable page. How? By jettisoning WordPress and SEO entirely. I use a static site generator (in my case, Gutenberg[1]) to generate the page--no WordPress backend required. And, by respecting my user's privacy and not trying to play the SEO game, I don't need any of the code many sites devote to tracking/SEO.

I believe that static sites and respect for privacy are the better path forward. Instead of tweaking WordPress, we should be looking to build the next WordPress--and build one that is static, and minimalist, by default.

[0] https://www.codesections.com/

[1] https://www.getgutenberg.io/

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#34

I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't sacrifice in the same ways this site does: it keeps readable source code, it still uses BEM classes for maintainability, and it has a working menu on the same page (rather than requiring visitors to load a seperate menu page). So, with less than half the kilobyt…

I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say ignoring SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is about structuring your code and content appropriately. What SEO tracking are you referring to?

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#35

I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't sacrifice in the same ways this site does: it keeps readable source code, it still uses BEM classes for maintainability, and it has a working menu on the same page (rather than requiring visitors to load a seperate menu page). So, with less than half the kilobyt…

I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say ignoring SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is about structuring your code and content appropriately. What SEO tracking are you referring to?

I meant the Yoast stuff, which they claim to spend a whole KB on. They say

"but the meta stuff added by Yoast bumped it up almost a whole KB! However, given I'm trying to spread a message [it's worth it]"

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#36
I don't want to take a way from the work done, it's indeed a lot of work to get websites to load fast nowadays, when the images are so hi-res and there are so many js libraries and requests, and then you have to take tablets and phones into account... it get's big fast. But the 7kb title is clickbait at best. I too can make a website load fast by extracting pretty much everything from it. When working in the real world with real clients, this wouldn't fly. It would be much more impressive to get a website such as css-tricks.com and show me how you have optimized it.

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#37
I'm fully on board for creating leaner websites and writing less code, but if we're measuring energy usage, then doesn't streaming video pretty much dwarf all other internet traffic? With perhaps blockchain syncs in a distant second place?

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#38

This is a great reminder of what can be done by just “rethinking everything” and saying why do I NEED that plugin, lib, script, font lib etc. one thing not immediately obvious to me was that the responsive menu goes to a new page https://sustywp.com/menu/ and because the site is so fast it actually doesn’t feel like a page load. I haven’t really thought about this but hamburger menus get so complex these days it migh…

The menu on this site is essentially what a website's index page used to be, back in the early days of the WWW. It was, generally, a listing of a website's contents, modeled after the default directory listing that a web server produces.

So this menu felt very normal to me, but it may be off-putting to newer users of the web who are used to contemporary conventions such as slide-out hamburgers (not to be confused with slider hamburgers :-) ).

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#39

I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't sacrifice in the same ways this site does: it keeps readable source code, it still uses BEM classes for maintainability, and it has a working menu on the same page (rather than requiring visitors to load a seperate menu page). So, with less than half the kilobyt…

I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say ignoring SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is about structuring your code and content appropriately. What SEO tracking are you referring to?

Justifying SEO is the classic motte-and-bailey argument of this industry. Of course SEO is, ostensibly, about "structuring your code and content" in a search-engine-friendly way. But in reality, it's mostly about trying to game the search engine algorithms and spamming the living shit out of the entire web.

Re: Delivering WordPress in 7kb

#40

Minimizing requests, using system fonts and using vector images are what makes this great because it makes the page loads so fast. Does 7kb really make much of a difference?

7kb specifically is not of major importance. If you're loading all content from one origin, fitting the content needed to load the page into the initial TCP congestion window does matter. 7kb of content will probably fit depending on how much non-content is in the packets. This is not noticeable on a low-latency connection, but on a bad mobile connection it makes a massive difference.

I'm trying to make a static website myself. Can you tell me if it's possible to optimize the network side of things?

https://waivek.github.io/website/

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