How I work
I design and code everything myself, using lightweight technologies and optimising code to minimise energy consumption. I also use hosting services powered by green energy. The webpages I produce are:
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Sustainable
I use techniques that reduce the amount of energy used by a webpage. These include:
- producing static sites
- subsetting fonts
- using CSS instead of JavaScript when possible
- reducing the size of files through a process called code minifying
- using efficient image formats
- designing for reduced image use, fewer fonts on a page, and other data-reducing aspects
With these techniques and more, I produce webpages that are very light on code compared to those made with well-known CMSs, such as Squarespace or WordPress, and more commonly used frameworks such as NextJS.
Additionally, I use hosting services that run on green energy.
Custom designed
I build personalised webpages with custom-made imagery for my clients. My design work draws on my background in Fine Art and my commitment to sustainability. I enjoy supporting my clients’ ideas in ways that prioritise energy efficiency. All the design work on the Green Heron website was created by me.
Accessible
I write with semantic HTML and use relative font sizes. This results in fully functional and navigable webpages for screen readers and users with reduced vision. My pages are also fully responsive.
SEO-performant
Static site generation and semantic HTML result in good SEO scores. There’s no need to optimise the webpage any further.
Fast
Using static HTML, with minimal code bases and minimal use of JavaScript, gives the servers and browsers less work to do and minimal data to parse at load time. This results in webpages that load quickly and have fast page speeds.
Secure
Using static HTML and minimal JavaScript leaves no access points for malicious actors. My webpages have SSL certificates to ensure security and spam protection server side.
Future-proof
Static HTML will pretty much last as long as we have browsers. In addition, my technique has very few dependencies. The ones I do have are hand-picked to be open source and available. This ensures that no organisational decisions or changes will impact the webpage's performance or availability.
