site clocks in at a gigantic 2.1 mb downloaded in chrome on first load about perldotcom HOT 4 CLOSED

All articles with images have been given thumbnails: these are typically 1/3 of the size of the articles' cover image. Testing the site now, I see 1.5MB of content downloaded, so we've saved about 1MB.

I disagree that 2.5mb is "gigantic" though, compared to other tech sites:

• ArsTechnica.com - 4.7MB
• SlashDot.org - 3.1MB
• www.theregister.co.uk - 1.5MB
• drdobbs.com - 2.3 MB

We could reduce the size further by restricting the number of articles listed on the homepage. If we cut it to 15 from 30, that could save approximately another 2/3 MB. Let me think about that.

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I agree that it could be better. I think the majority of the download size is caused by article thumbnails being resized instead of using lower quality smaller images as thumbnails. We do have a thumbnail front matter property that can be used to provide the thumbnail image.

So to fix this, we simply need to update all 30 of the latest articles with a thumbnail. That sounds scriptable, so we might as well update all articles under content/article that are missing a thumbnail.

from perldotcom.

@wchristian the home page now clocks in at a svelte 1.1MB

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Definitely makes a difference on my phone. :)

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