Website Update

End of last year I updated my portfolio website – yes, this one – and I'm sharing my process here. Not only how to build it so that it is fast-loading, but also how to go about it in terms of sustainability.

Website update

End of last year, I finally gave my website the small relaunch I had been thinking about for some time. Above all, I wanted to provide a quick overview of my work and an easy-to-navigate, growing archive of my series.

And although I love graphic design when it makes sense and brings clarity, I believe that a photography website should be focused on the work itself with minimal distractions. That’s why I kept it as sleek and straightforward as possible, with the small exception of using beautiful fonts (by Commercial Type in this case), as I love typography. But the image I’m most proud of is the second:

Speed!

For me, there are only few things more annoying than a website that takes forever to load. And although it’s almost impossible to achieve a score of 100 on Google’s Page Speed Insights I’ve managed it, despite my site being image-heavy! My work page loads in 0,3s (from Europe) without using a CDN (yet).

But let me explain!

I have a background in graphic design, and over the years, as I built websites for my various projects, I became more and more proficient in web design. After a period of deep disdain for the messy code of WordPress and other website builders that usually come with a hefty price tag, my coding skills were good enough to finally know how to do it better. With cleaner code and, more importantly, sustainably.

Sustainable web design and hosting

When speaking about web design, sustainability and data privacy don’t even come to mind for many. But the internet has a serious environmental footprint. The IT sector accounts for approximately 7% of global electricity consumption, and it is forecast to rise to 13% by 2030. This footprint currently represents 3-5% of global carbon emissions, putting it on a par with the aviation sector. Every image we store in a cloud (yes, on Instagram, too), every email we send consumes energy. And websites need a physical infrastructure like servers, data centers and networks that require electricity and water for operation and cooling.

So, here’s what I’ve done to build my photography website as responsibly as I can and with the benefit of a super fast loading website stripped down to the max:

6 quick tips to make your website faster and greener

1. 01 – Green Hosting. My provider for years is a small German company operating on renewable energy since 2003! If you have to use a website builder, try to find out about their hosting. Some of them are transitioning to green energy, but often only offset their carbon emissions with RECs, like for example, Amazon’s AWS for a long time, maybe still (used by Webflow). Squarespace still has only vague declarations of intent on its website.

2. 02 – Clean code. I use a flat file system (but a well-coded framework works too) and try to be as efficient as possible.

3. 03 – Minify images and serve them responsively by adapting them to the respective screen size. Use the latest image data formats, such as WebP and AVIF. They load much faster and consume less energy.

4. 04 – Lazy load or defer loading of offscreen images.

5. 05 – Use caching for static assets you don’t update regularly.

6. 06 – Try to use as little as possible third-party scripts, like, for example, analytics and metrics scripts.



These topics are extensive, and I'm just scratching the surface. But I'm thinking about delving into them in a newsletter. I want to write primarily about my photography work, but let me know what you think. Would you be interested in such topics?


Feel free to write me an e-mail with your thoughts and/or questions on this! My contact is in the info section.