My top content in 2024

2024 was a transitional year for me. I spent the first half of this year working at Shopify, and in the latter half I went freelance again. Being a freelancer is great in terms of freedom, so I am able to branch out a bit more now.

Top Shopify web performance content #

Most of my top content was really the posts I wrote on performance.shopify.com. Luckily, the folks still there gave me the data for the top posts on that site:

1. Responsive images on Shopify with Liquid
2. Optimizing images for performance on Shopify
3. Announcing new Liquid features for better web performance
4. How to optimize Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) on Shopify sites (now also syndicated here)
5. Debugging common causes for slow loading in Shopify Liquid storefronts (now also syndicated here)

What that list tells me is that people are still overly concerned with images as a cause for poor performance. Usually, images themselves are not the issue but loading strategies for all resources, not just images. See post #5 above for the common causes on Shopify sites which translates well to most ecommerce and other sites.

Top content on sia.codes #

This site had a 2 year break in content, so most of my top posts on sia.codes are actually from previous years:

1. Making Google Fonts Faster in 2022
2. Explore JavaScript Dependencies With Lighthouse Treemap
3. How to Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources: a Deep Dive
4. Itsiest, Bitsiest Eleventy Tutorial
5. An In-Depth Tutorial of Webmentions + Eleventy

The top 3 posts are a result of (1) accidentally good SEO, (2) SEO but when I knew a bit more about SEO content optimization, and (3) a targeted effort to achieve good SEO on an underserved keyword. I did this free email SEO course years ago, and it really helped me understand non-icky strategies for better content that also achieves better SEO.

With the great upheaval in social media and the growth in Bluesky, webmentions are a popular topic again which might explain why that post edged in at number 5.

If I focus only on newer posts, here are my top two:

1. Dynamic social share images using Cloudinary
2. Migrating from Netlify to Cloudflare for AI bot protection

Shopify Theme Vitals #

Looking beyond blog posts, my biggest new project is Theme Vitals where I post real user performance data split by Shopify theme. It launched in September 2024, and traffic has been increasing each month as I post updated data and new features. It's on track to outpace all my other content.

Conclusion #

I'm excited for 2024. I plan to continue writing new articles both in the world of web performance and indie web. Also, I'll continue building out new features in Theme Vitals.

Cover photo by Alex Shuper on Unsplash+

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