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Live perf tweets!
I'm going to be making performance improvements on https://tosbourn.com/ today and thought it would be fun to live tweet my process.
Will keep it all to this thread, so feel free to mute if you don't like fun.
Please play along by suggesting/questioning
I'm going to be making performance improvements on https://tosbourn.com/ today and thought it would be fun to live tweet my process.
Will keep it all to this thread, so feel free to mute if you don't like fun.
Please play along by suggesting/questioning
The problem:
Posts such as https://tosbourn.com/what-is-the-gemfile/ are scoring ~51 in lighthouse for performance.
That is a joke, we can do better.
Lighthouse isn't a perfect tool, but it is quick to run and understand the results. Until we're scoring in the 90s there is no need for more data
Posts such as https://tosbourn.com/what-is-the-gemfile/ are scoring ~51 in lighthouse for performance.
That is a joke, we can do better.
Lighthouse isn't a perfect tool, but it is quick to run and understand the results. Until we're scoring in the 90s there is no need for more data
Before I even start delving into the details, there is one thing I want to do.
We have Google Ads on the site, but it makes us very little money, not worth the tracking and perf issues. I'm going to remove these first.
We have Google Ads on the site, but it makes us very little money, not worth the tracking and perf issues. I'm going to remove these first.
It is tempting when doing this work to branch your code into a branch such as "performance-improvements".
I find that too generic and I much prefer to make small changes and submit them for review as distinct units of work.
Therefore, my branch is called remove-google-ads
I find that too generic and I much prefer to make small changes and submit them for review as distinct units of work.
Therefore, my branch is called remove-google-ads
Some important tech details.
This is a static site, built with Jekyll and hosted on Github
It doesn't contain any CI/build tools, just the basic Github setup of "we check this branch and deploy whatever is on it"
I feel like this can be improved to add some perf steps.
This is a static site, built with Jekyll and hosted on Github
It doesn't contain any CI/build tools, just the basic Github setup of "we check this branch and deploy whatever is on it"
I feel like this can be improved to add some perf steps.
Because I'm removing an ad, it is worth making sure my ads.txt is up to date ( https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7532444?hl=en)
Turns out there was only one entry in it so I can remove the file from the project. I love deleting stuff.
Turns out there was only one entry in it so I can remove the file from the project. I love deleting stuff.
17 lines removed from the codebase in total. The changes are deploying now and I will test.
When it comes to web performance, I've found testing locally or even on staging sites to be a bit rubbish.
Focus on fast deploys then you can do perf testing live, where it matters.
When it comes to web performance, I've found testing locally or even on staging sites to be a bit rubbish.
Focus on fast deploys then you can do perf testing live, where it matters.
