nzxr.dev, remade
An attempt at improving an existing website.
Baseline
Storing the baseline
Using wget I extracted a copy of the site, as it was running on 2020-08-24. The command I used was as follows:
wget
--recursive
--page-requisites
--adjust-extension
--span-hosts
--convert-links
--restrict-file-names=windows
--domains nzxr.dev,googleusercontent.com
https://nzxr.dev
This extract doesn't include the webfonts and extraneous CSS served from fonts.google.com, as this is user-agent specfic.
I ran a local python webserver, to get an idea of the footprint of assets required to run off one host. I also disabled JavaScript to get a sense of the site's reliability.
Filtering by domain: localhost, I got the following result:
That's quite a lot for a one-pager, without JavaScript.
To make sure I didn't make any mistakes in the extract, here are two screenshots of the live site vs. my extract:
Screenshots
Live site
Extract
Baseline analysis
Images
There are some massive uncompressed images at play here. These will be the first target for reducing the overall weight of the site.
e.g. A 2MB masthead image
Cruft in the HTML
The HTML is a mess of JavaScript and Google proprietary code. A sitebuilder is at play here, could it be Google Sites?
Self-hosting assets
5 domains to serve HTML, inline CSS, and images. That excludes the additional domains required for Google Fonts. Using a warm and open connection for these supporting assets would see the response times drop significantly.
Lastly, JavaScript, ugh.
The amount of third-party requests is insane. The Youtube video embeds are the major first offender, but the amount of analytics and ad data too is creepy.
If I have enough time, I'll see what can be done to drain the swamp.