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I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't

I think this is the wrong way to go about site minimalism. My personal site[0] is pretty minimalist--the home page has one request for 3.3 KB. But it doesn't sacrifice in the same ways this site does: it keeps readable source code, it still uses BEM classes for maintainability, and it has a working menu on the same page (rather than requiring visitors to load a seperate menu page). So, with less than half the kilobytes, I have a more readable, usable, and maintainable page. How? By jettisoning WordPress and SEO entirely. I use a static site generator (in my case, Gutenberg[1]) to generate the page--no WordPress backend required. And, by respecting my user's privacy and not trying to play the SEO game, I don't need any of the code many sites devote to tracking/SEO. I believe that static sites and respect for privacy are the better path forward. Instead of tweaking WordPress, we should be looking to build the next WordPress--and build one that is static, and minimalist, by default. [0] https://www.codesections.com/ https://www.codesections.com/ [1] https://www.getgutenberg.io/ https://www.getgutenberg.io/

thestepafter 8y ago
I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say ignoring SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is about structuring your code and content appropriately. What SEO tracking are you referring to?
- codesections 8y ago
  I meant the Yoast stuff, which they claim to spend a whole KB on. They say "but the meta stuff added by Yoast bumped it up almost a whole KB! However, given I'm trying to spread a message [it's worth it]"
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Justifying SEO is the classic motte-and-bailey argument of this industry. Of course SEO is, ostensibly, about "structuring your code and content" in a search-engine-friendly way. But in reality, it's mostly about trying to game the search engine algorithms and spamming the living shit out of the entire web.
deleted 8y ago
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keithpeter 8y ago
"The Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote about his early childhood experience repairing transistor radios in the 1930s." They would not be transistor radios in the 1930s. Battery radios had valves/tubes in them and two kinds of battery. The picture is a very late 1950s/early 60s transistor radio. Nice site, interesting content, have you ever come across the British judge Lord Denning? He was a mathematician to begin with then turned to law having decided that teaching was boring.
jjeaff 8y ago
There are lots of WordPress plugins that generate and cache static pages. As for keeping code readable, if you are using a generator to create a static page, why wouldn't you minimize upon generation? You of course keep your code readable internally, but what your users get should be minimized and as small as possible, unless your users are there to peak at the source code.

thestepafter 8y ago

I’m curious as to what you are referring to when you say ignoring SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is about structuring your code and content appropriately. What SEO tracking are you referring to?

codesections 8y ago
I meant the Yoast stuff, which they claim to spend a whole KB on. They say "but the meta stuff added by Yoast bumped it up almost a whole KB! However, given I'm trying to spread a message [it's worth it]"
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Justifying SEO is the classic motte-and-bailey argument of this industry. Of course SEO is, ostensibly, about "structuring your code and content" in a search-engine-friendly way. But in reality, it's mostly about trying to game the search engine algorithms and spamming the living shit out of the entire web.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

keithpeter 8y ago

"The Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote about his early childhood experience repairing transistor radios in the 1930s." They would not be transistor radios in the 1930s. Battery radios had valves/tubes in them and two kinds of battery. The picture is a very late 1950s/early 60s transistor radio. Nice site, interesting content, have you ever come across the British judge Lord Denning? He was a mathematician to begin with then turned to law having decided that teaching was boring.

jjeaff 8y ago

There are lots of WordPress plugins that generate and cache static pages. As for keeping code readable, if you are using a generator to create a static page, why wouldn't you minimize upon generation? You of course keep your code readable internally, but what your users get should be minimized and as small as possible, unless your users are there to peak at the source code.