With the sudden switch to Lighthouse, the once revered optimization platform becomes unrecognizable and unusable. Today I went to complete an ongoing optimization project for a client of mine only to discover that the entire GTMetrix platform has been converted to use Lighthouse rather than PageSpeed and YSlow. While I am aware of the “advantages” that Google feels that Lighthouse offers (they think all of their software is the best), the service has never provided useful optimization reports for developers like myself, who are generally tasked with updating a site until it scores well in a trusted rating system. For years, that trusted rating system has been PageSpeed and YSlow through GTMetrix. I have been an ardent supporter of GTMetrix for years, and have continuously found the reports offered through PageSpeed and YSlow to be vastly superior to the gross generalizations made by Google’s optimization platform. Google’s PageSpeed testing platform for example, pitches the need to switch to their proprietary image extension (webp), presenting this as a major issue with website performance when we all know what it is – […]

Well, its 2020. Two-thousand-and-twenty. Holy fuck. What is it about the arbitrarily assigned significance of a new decade that is so captivating to humans? You see the same effect throughout all of numerology. It really pulls at my heart strings to think of the amazing memories that I have made over the past decade. Some of the memories are of joy, others of heartache. Some of accomplishment, some of failure. The beauty of all of that merged into a single thought – “last decade,” is almost too much to bear, yet I can’t look away or diminish its significance. I graduated from college and started my career in this last decade. I found the love of my life. I lived in three different states. A lot has happened! The feeling of wanting to revisit some of these memories brought me to dig through my old portfolio, dating back to some of my first professional projects created back in 2010-2011. It was amazing to see how much I have grown since then, as a web developer, as a designer, and as […]

The rise of analytics has ushered in a new era of business management. Once only obtainable through expensive market research, data is now available, and used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. Google Analytics, when used properly, is one of the most commonly used and powerful analytics tools on the market. Its also fucking free. Everyone is, or should be, using it. Sadly, many website owners misinterpret their website analytics data and rush off to hire a web developer fix things that aren’t actually broken. Many website owners look to see improvements in two categories: pageviews and conversions. After all, a store that gets busier and sells more product is growing right? Perhaps, but if pageviews or conversions are not increasing, does that then mean that the business is dying? You see, this becomes an area where you want to dig deeper into the data and perform experiments in order to discover what is working and what isn’t. Maybe your product is missing a key feature. Maybe the prices are too high. Maybe your traffic is coming from off-topic […]