Hello,

This part of Web Designer Forum is all about helping you to make faster, leaner and more efficient websites.

Whether you’re tweaking CSS and JavaScript for lightning-fast load times, tuning server-side settings, or exploring tools to boost performance: this is the place to share tips, ask questions, and learn from each other.

Feel free to ask for advice or simply share your favourite optimisation tricks so we can make the web faster, together. 

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My favorite optimisation tip is: keep it simple!

You don't need animations, fancy fonts, third party feeds, images for effect, accordions, sliders and other detritus.

A simple page with great content, easy to use navigation and clear calls to action it much better for your visitors and the search engines.

And invest in decent hosting!

Don't forget accessibility. Basic accessibility isn't hard but it's well worth learning about it.

There are many online tools to help, browser web developer tools usually have accessibility tools built in, or you can use something like https://silktide.com/toolbar/ which is an extension for Chromium based browsers (and my goto tool). 

 

That’s a great initiative. Website performance optimization is one of the most crucial aspects of modern web development. A few key areas to focus on for faster, leaner websites include:

Code Optimization: Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Use tools like Terser, CSSNano, or HTMLMinifier.

Image Optimization: Compress images using WebP or AVIF formats and serve them via a CDN.

Caching: Implement browser caching, server-side caching (Redis or Varnish), and leverage HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 for faster delivery.

Lazy Loading & Code Splitting: Load only what’s necessary to improve initial page rendering speed.

Server Performance: Use lightweight frameworks, optimized hosting, and CDNs like Cloudflare or Bunny.net.

Monitoring Tools: Regularly test using Lighthouse, GTmetrix, or PageSpeed Insights to track performance metrics.

Sharing optimization workflows or real-world results here can really help others fine-tune their sites and boost both SEO and user experience.

A very cool, beginner-friendly resource for sorting out WordPress performance here: https://remkusdevries.com/how-i-diagnose-wordpress-performance-bottlenecks (no affiliation).

If you're using a content management system for a new site (that's probably most sites nowadays) do some homework and choose the most appropriate one that can do as much stuff as possible using native tools. The main reason for this is that 3rd party addons/plugins can affect performance negatively, especially ones that do a lot of heavy data crunching. That results in having to introduce more work to keep it performant. If you add new addons/plugins later down the line there's a chance they have a negative hit on performance, so you get stuck in the optimisation route again.

The takeaway here is to analyse content/publishing/editing needs and ask how much can be managed with native CMS tools. If you need many addons/plugins for any given CMS that's a potential read flag, conversely if you need none (or just a few) that's a green flag.

Totally agree with keeping things simple and relying on native CMS tools whenever possible. Less bloat definitely means better speed! I'd also add that keeping an eye on database queries is huge; sometimes the bottleneck isn't the front-end, but how the back-end is fetching data. Great thread!