What WordPress developers can do about climate change

The Internet’s usage of dirty energy is a growing concern. The Internet’s data centres alone may already have the same CO₂ footprint as global air travel. For the first time, this year’s Internet Health Report by the Mozilla Foundation has explicitly stated that sustainability should be a bigger priority for the industry.

WordPress is the most widely used CMS on the Internet. As of April 2018, it powers 30.6% of the world’s top 10 million websites. This makes WordPress a concentrated target to promote the greening of the Internet.

In this talk, Jack will discuss the ideas, principles and emerging best practices of sustainable web design, and how they can be applied to WordPress websites.

Transcript

1. What WordPress developers can do about climate change Jack Lenox WordCamp Norrköping, August 2018
13. Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-going-to-take-nearly-400-years-to-transform-the-energy-system/
14. What do you mean? I’m a web developer. The web’s green right?
15. No. Sorry.
16. The Internet uses a colossal amount of electricity
17. How much electricity?
21. How little? About 12-15%...
23. The Internet produces about one billion tonnes of CO₂ every year (and it's rising)
31. So what can I do?
37. Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Good Design 1. Good design is innovative 2. Good design makes a product useful 3. Good design is aesthetic 4. Good design makes a product understandable 5. Good design is unobtrusive 6. Good design is honest 7. Good design is long-lasting 8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail 9. Good design is environmentally friendly 10. Good design is as little as possible
38. In essence, making websites sustainable means reducing the compute cycles required to serve them, and powering them with renewable energy
39. Sustainable Web Design 1. Findability 2. Performance Optimisation 3. Design & User Experience 4. Green Hosting Source: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
40. 1. Findability “The easier content is to find, the fewer pages a user has to load to locate information. This means fewer server requests are made and that unnecessary page elements — like photos and videos, which take up a lot of bandwidth — don’t load, either. These small energy savings accumulate over time.” Source: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
41. 2. Performance Optimisation “Sustainability and page speed go hand-in-hand. When your website runs more efficiently, you use less processing power, which means that your site uses less energy and will have a lower carbon footprint. Your customers expect to get the content they want instantaneously, and efficient pages load more quickly, reducing your site’s bounce rate and keeping customers engaged and satisfied.” Source: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
42. 3. Design & User Experience “Sustainable design is design that is efficient and accessible. Creating good experiences for both mobile and desktop users improves accessibility because it makes it easy for people to access your site no matter what hardware they have. Mobile-first web design also helps you avoid loading large assets designed for desktop machines, which improves your site’s speed and energy efficiency.” Source: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
43. 4. Green Hosting “The servers that store the files that make up web pages require power 24 hours a day, so the single most impactful thing you can do to move toward a more sustainable website is use a hosting provider that runs on 100% renewable energy.” Source: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
46. What does your website really need? Carousels? Embedded videos? Endless sidebars? Big, heavy images?
48. A bit about good practice 1. Simplify the interface 2. Reduce code i. Create lean HTML ii. Simplify your design system iii. Use less script, use preprocessors responsibly, use content breakpoints 3. Images i. Use the right image (gif, png, or jpg?) ii. Smush the shit out of them iii. Use progressive rendering 4. Backend stuff i. async and defer , preload and prefetch ii. HTTPS over HTTP2 (and PHP 7.2) iii. ABC: Always Be Caching
49. Taking this to an extreme...
54. 246KB
55. 6.7KB
58. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas
59. Tack @jacklenox
60. Några frågror?* @jacklenox * Snälla fråga inte på svenska, jag låtsas bara Slides available at: https://speakerdeck.com/jacklenox/what-wordpress-developers-can-do-about-climate-change