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from the hope-we-don't-drain-the-battery dept.
Low-tech Magazine explains how to build a low-tech web site, using its own (solar powered) web site as an example. They cover both the web design and the actual hardware in use, an Olimex A20. The idea is to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing the content, seeing as complex designs with Javascript have burdensome resource requirements that translate into increased use of electricity. Renewable power sources alone are not enough to address the growing energy use of the Internet. Their server is also self-hosted so there's no need for third-party tracking and cookies either.
Low-tech Magazine was born in 2007 and has seen minimal changes ever since. Because a website redesign was long overdue — and because we try to practice what we preach — we decided to build a low-tech, self-hosted, and solar-powered version of Low-tech Magazine. The new blog is designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content.
Earlier on SN:
Conservative Web Development (2018)
About a Third of All Web Sites Run on WordPress (2018)
Please, Keep your Blog Light (2018)
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday September 28 2018, @03:00AM
I'm all in favor of trying things to learn. And goodness knows these guys need to learn a LOT, looks like from the comments on their own page they are already being educated by their users a bit. So it is good. But instead of emailing them a comment (which ya hafta do there) I'll just post a few of their current mistakes here.
1. Worrying about the wrong things. They worry about the filesize and transfer of a frickin logo and a custom font. Unless done totally wrong that happens exactly ONCE and gets cached by the browser. Not a problem.
2. Users there already schooled em about the dumb way they were trying to minimize graphics. Good on them for trying something and once they adopt the suggestions, anything that cuts bloat is good.
3. Going entirely ad free is probably going to cost em. You can have an ad on a page without going into total retard bloat. You really don't need a dozen trackers and beacons, half a dozen annoying ads and blocks of sponsored content, popup video, social media trackers / buttons and an Amazon affiliate link. Most users understand ads are not always horrible, one or two tasteful ones are just fine. I have written before about how ads should be, no need for a rerun.
4. Their power situation is sub-optimal. Ixnay on the basic bitch 12V 7A lead battery. Get an about to be discarded golf cart / marine / deep cycle battery, nothing greener than giving a second life to something about to be discarded. Even with 1/3 of rated capacity it will have much more storage and they could safely discharge it deeper than the 30% they have their controller set for. With their 50W panel if they get an hour of good light or can just generate at 10% (i.e. 5W) most of the day they are gaining net charge so that part is good. With a bigger battery they should be able to stop worrying about going down from low batt.