Any way to reduce page size?

[whollyjordan]

I enjoy using Automad.

It's a cool CMS!

Though, if I could wave a magic wand... the one aspect I'd improve is the page size.

A basic page of just a few lines of text clocks in around 350 KB.

Are there any easy ways to trim the page size?

[marcantondahmen]

Hey, yeah working on it. The next release will handle page size a bit more efficiently.

[whollyjordan]

🤩
That's awesome 🙌

[whollyjordan]

i ran a PageSpeed Insights test today. It shows a WordPress site is faster to load. Which is a shame. [edit: i acknowledge i was comparing apples to oranges here; my bad.] I think numerous "render blocking requests" are hurting here. But also, I notice that a PNG image on this particular page, pulled from the cache folder, is more than twice the original image size uploaded. I know I've mentioned something about images before. I note the config file can specify a JPG compression number. Not sure what happens with PNG images. My preference would be zero compression, as I pre-optimise all images before uploading...

[marcantondahmen]

Hi, I doubt that WordPress is faster. Pages are cached and served as static HTML after being rendered once. So you maybe just checked once after a change has been made that invalidates the cache or caching is disabled.

Regarding images, that depends on the template in use. If a template resizes any image than it is pulled from cache. If you're concerned about size, PNG is definitely the wrong format and you should consider webp instead.

[whollyjordan]

I previously ran a lean theme on WP (Focus, by DIYthemes,) with the usual caching plugin. The total page size is smaller on WP versus Automad in my use-case, with fewer render blocking scripts. Here's an example of scripts that are blocking the initial render, according to PageSpeed Insights tool (albeit as simulated on "Mobile," which is more critical of such matters!)

Regarding the image handling, it is odd to me in Automad. But I'm not a developer. So I could be making an error.

I use version 2 of Automad, and the default theme. And I love it.

While your point about webp being a more efficient format is true, and I am stuck in the past with JPG and PNG (smile,) I don't understand why a post-uploaded image of any format, would be made bigger. I'd like to turn that feature off!

[marcantondahmen]

I think here are a couple of things mixed up. You compare Automad with WordPress but you use different themes with a totally different set of assets that are delivered to a client. That is quite an invalid comparison. Automad itself is much faster in rendering pages since it simply does not require fetching data from another database server.

You are comparing the download speed of assets here. But WordPress and Automad run on servers and therefore you can only compare response time, and this only when you use the same theme. Assets are dependent on the theme you use and not on the render engine of a CMS. These are different things. And the themes are also not the same.

Additionally Automad also provides features out of the box that WordPress doesn't but are quite essential for modern sites. These are basically the assets you can see in your screenshot. WordPress supports none of that without a plugin. Also here the comparison doesn't add up.

Regarding images, the image size depends on the compression and quality that is used when generating images. Automad uses a quite high quality. With this setup, a highly compressed image might get larger in file size after reducing its resolution because it is regenerated with a better quality. Also it is important to understand why images are regenerated and loaded from cache. In many places, images are resized for preloading purpose, galleries, slideshows or pagelists. All these features generate resized images in the cache.

If size matters, use webp images that are not pre-optimized. That will give you the best quality with the smallest file size.

[whollyjordan]

Thank you for explaining these matters.

I also now have a better grasp of my experience with images. I was pre-optimising images with much heavier compression than Automad uses (including reducing colour palette.) Those images end up re-encoded to a higher spec. Thus the file size jump. Makes sense now!

[Imerion]

I can chime in and confirm that according to a bunch of tests I've conducted Automad comes out on top every time - it loads faster, uses fewer resources and takes up less space, which is amazing considering it has several great features out of the box that Wordpress and others don't have. I'm extremely impressed. :D

[whollyjordan]

i'm a fan. and i'm learning.

i also much, much prefer the interface!