Hosting
✓ Powered by 100% renewable energy
✓ Data centre located close to target users
Our site is hosted by Digital Ocean using an Equinix facility in London (Equinix LD5) which is powered by 100% renewable energy (see Equinix Sustainability Guide PDF).
We chose a London data centre to be closer to our target users, the largest share of which are in the UK (40.16% share in August 2021) .
Content delivery
✓ All static content delivered by a CDN
We use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver all our static assets to users. This means the largest files on the site are delivered from locations nearest to users around the world. This reduces the distance data needs to travel, reducing energy use and page load times significantly.
Server caching
✓ Static HTML pages served to most users
✓ HTML, CSS, JS files gzipped and minified
We use multiple caching techniques to deliver the site in the fastest and most energy efficient way possible.
All pages are served by a CMS caching module, enabling static versions of dynamic pages to be served to most users. In tests this loads > 98% faster compared to non-cached pages.
All HTML, CSS and JS are gzipped, minified and cached. Unnecessary data such as comments, whitespace, and optional tags are stripped from these files.
Progressive Web App technology (PWA)
✓ Files are stored locally to reduce network requests
✓ Site loads only new content between pages
The site uses PWA techniques to further increase site performance and reduce data transfer.
We use a service worker to cache files on users devices using local storage, meaning that we can massively reduce the number of network requests per session.
Page loads are also reduced by only loading the required content for each new page. Common elements (eg. the footer) are not requested for each new page the user visits.
Images
✓ Highly optimised using CDN image processing
✓ Use of modern formats (webp, svg)
Fonts
✓ Reduced number of font variations
✓ Use of modern formats (WOFF, WOFF2)
SEO
✓ Highly optimised for SEO
✓ Helping users find the most relevant content quickly
Copy
✓ Clear and efficient copy designed to avoid unecessary time reading
UX
✓ Clear and simplified UX to help users get to content with fewer clicks
Latest PHP version
✓ Latest version of PHP to ensure the most efficient use of server resources
Work still to do
✗ Create 'dark mode' version of the site to reduce energy use on end user devices
✗ Explore ways to reduce use of Javascript, lowering the processing power needed
✗ Assess use of video across the site, incl. if autoplay required and shortening length
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This checklist is based on 17 ways to make your website more energy efficient by Wholegrain Digital.
Last updated 15/12/2021