I don’t really use Chrome, unless if it’s for work purposes. So that’s probably why I didn’t know you could use Lighthouse in the webdev tools window. 😱
Soo yeah, this was the best I could for GPORG (on the homepage). Apparently it is possible to get 100s all four, but almost impossible unless if you have an extremely barebones, one-page site. Some of the stuff Lighthouse wants you to do to score a 100 under Performance and Best Practices is kind of ridiculous:
- Remove unused CSS & JS — I mean…I once I figured out tree-shaking, the Performance score went from 80s to 90s. The only reason why it’s not a 100 is because the “unused” CSS & JS is being used on other pages (like the CSS for the Gutenberg blocks), and I still need that for things to display correctly. But Lighthouse doesn’t know that, so I still got dinged. If the CSS & JS files were much bigger due to code being used on other pages, I would’ve gotten a lower score.
- Also depending on how many plugins you have that bring their own (required) code to the party, you might see a lower score.
- And also? Adding things like tracking scripts can generate a lower score.
- Reduce server load — not getting this one anymore, but when I was still getting it, it was like…”how???” I had a pretty darn good caching plugin, combined with Cloudflare with memcached enabled, soo….🤷♀️
- Registers an
unloadlistener — this is caused by the WPBruiser plugin, injecting some embedded JS directly onto the page. There’s no way for me remove that, and even if I could, I have no way of knowing if it would break the plugin.
Moral of the story — use Lighthouse as a guide but don’t lose sleep over it. (The only scores I care about really is accessibility and SEO, both of which I got 100s on.)
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