Domains, Load Times, and the Alt-Text Grind

June 25, 2021 Lehan Edirisinghe

A practical website day about explaining domains and DNS, watching load times swing between bad and good, removing the clunky search box, and grinding through accessibility alt text until the site finally feels good enough to leave alone.

Domains, Website Speed and a Homepage With 29 Images

5:30 p.m.

(b)

A domain is the URL address. It gets much, much more complicated than this.

Uniform Resource Locator.

A domain name server or DNS.

We have two.

Primary Domain 1: https://CyberspaceCommand.com and Secondary Domain 2: http://cybspc.com

I use alternative hosting providers. I intend to use a different email server for Domain 2.

Facebook has many domains. The two important ones are Facebook.com and FB.com

Their secondary domain which has an abbreviated FB routes or tells your PC or mobile to go to the primary domain which contains the full name of the site Facebook.

It is difficult to understand this because 1+1 is not always equal = 2.

Some argue, a shorter URL is better. Others say, it is best to have keywords in the URL itself.

FB decided to use the full name. I also followed them.

***

When I test the site. The loading times/ site performance varies. It fluctuates from 60s to less than 20, less than 10 is possible.

Wix, generous with their time and attention, they told taught me about this. They advise that there is high, medium and low impact situations.

This is why the performance fluctuates.

***

It looks okay, I removed the clunky search box. I think we will switch to a mobile app and a web app later.

It loads, in a new incognito window, on Samsung Galaxy S5 emulator in developer tools by Google, in about 3.45 seconds.

I switched to Apple iPhone X --

This time DOM Content Loaded 2.21 seconds.

This is good. Can't complain. I should just move on. I worry too much about these kinds of things.

***

I also have to admit, there are so many f***ing pictures, there are -- let me count this.

There are,

One,

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* You gotta see how this ends -- JK Rowling has nothing on Lehan *

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"TWENTY NINE!"

https://youtu.be/WEzEROSj11Q?t=280

There are also, 28 logos.

I like even numbers.

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Explaining Why Images Need Alternative Text

7:45 p.m.

(b)

Search engines and accessibility engines cannot "see" images, but they can read alternative alt text.

Writing Out Words and Removing a Suffix

9:30 p.m.

Sigh.

I was busy doing this.

I have to do a lot of these.

I have to write for instance, instead of, whatever, I have to write it out and remove the suffix

Hidden

Fixing Alt Text on an Image-Heavy Homepage

11:00 p.m.

Looks like, I got a 50 for the Mobile version, goes up to 93 for Desktop -- as good as it gets.

I am a heretic, 29, TWENTY NINE, big high resolution images on the main homepage--

28 logos.

So, yeah, it is asking for too much, it is pushing it, it is going to overload a website.

I cannot believe it works as good as it is.

I am happy with it.

I manually fixed up all the accessibility alt texts.

I do not want to use an accessibility page. I do not f***ing care. I am not Elbit Systems haha. I also, do not need a "cookie consent" tab, or what else?

What else do they suggest? MySpace's "Do Not Sell My Data" declaration?

Zuck my d***, motherfucker

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