My site, until recently, was using a system font stack, mostly because I would like to have the lightest website possible.
My featured images, heavily optimized, still account for large LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and adding custom fonts, in the most common way, can increase the overall weight of the website.
I am happy with my site, but on others, I need to use specified fonts to get the right visual experience across all user devices. In that case, I need to load additional fonts to accomplish that.
The fonts not only add weight to the website but also can hurt CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) if loaded incorrectly. As CLS is part of essential Core Web Vitals, its poor score can drop a website significantly in Google Search results.
Ironically, Google, on their Google Fonts website provides information (code) on how to implement the desired font in our website. The problem is, that their solution will have a huge negative impact on your website.
Not only they are loaded from an external source, but the speed of loading of your website and external fonts can also vary and cause, ironically, CLS, that Google will penalise you on.
A widely recommended method is to self-host your fonts (even these from Google). This, in most cases, may improve an impact on CLS, but not always. There are plenty of factors in how these fonts are delivered. If our hosting is poor and we are not using CDN (Content Delivery Network) then we can see worse results than loading fonts directly as Google advised.
Self-hosting fonts are the right approach, but it requires a couple of tweaks before it will work well for us in matters of web performance.
Let’s start with, how to load them correctly.
On the 16th of March 2022 Google announced its plans for a shutdown of Universal Analytics property and replace it fully with Goole Analytics 4 (v4) that been in the market since late 2020.
Google like to kill off their services. Luckily, this is not about shutting down Google Analytics but only the method, how analytics data are collected from websites. If you have been using Google Analytics for some time, then it’s more likely that you have been using Universal Analytics. You will know that by looking at your tracking code that will carry UA- on front of the numbers.
Analytics in its 4th version (UA is 3rd) has been developed for some time, but it wasn’t adopted as quick as Google could expect (or want), this is why they forcing a change by shutting down one in favour of another.
Over some time I have been looking for ideal Cookie Consent Banner implementation on my websites. The main goal was to make sure it’s not causing CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) resulting in poor Core Web Vitals (and downgrading website in Google Search).
I found the solution that worked for me for some time.
Together with other optimisation works I managed to achieve my goal, however, from time to time I saw a spike in PageSpeed Insight for some pages and I couldn’t figure out what else I could do to make sure that Cookie Banner (Bar) is not causing CLS.
Do you even care when you click Agree on the cookie consent bar? Do you even know what that means for you or what the hell are they for? Are you just trying to get rid of them to go to the intended website without distraction?
As much as they were intended to give some knowledge to end-users, they became just a sign of frustration and pointless exercise.
My wife is a magnificent cook and recently she found herself experimenting with Brownie. From experimentation to perfection she made today a perfect Baileys Brownie Cake.
Difficulty: Low
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Baking time: 35 minutes, 175C with fan
We are living in TL;DR1 world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to change the default search engine in the internet browser.
We are living in TL;DR1 world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to test your internet speed, using just an internet browser.
We are living in TL;DR1 world and I got only 15 seconds to give you an IT advice. In this series, I will try to do this. Here we go with how to take a screenshot of a website natively in a desktop web browser.
Do you watch YouTube a lot? Are you addicted to it, or just need it for your work?
Do the ads cause you a headache?
There is nothing better than suddenly showing an Ad in the middle of streaming from YouTube to a bigger audience (possibly on a bigger screen and using bigger, much louder audio equipment). This may ruin a lot and put distraction in time when you need people to concentrate on presented material (either video or just audio).
This may annoy you and others to the extent that you will think to pay this £11.99 per month for YouTube Premium only to get rid of this annoyance.
But what if I will tell you there is a better (and cheaper) way?
You may say what you want about Google Analytics, especially about how “they” are, apart from displaying data for you, using data gathered for “their” business purpose (forget about privacy). If you are a website owner and you are looking for a reasonable tracking method for your visitors, this is the solution that you will pick in the first place.
The problem with Google Analytics is that their tracking script weights a lot and that is slowing down your website.