Why the default installation does not improve pagespeed?

Question

Hi

I just run the google pagespeed on the Q2A website:

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.question2answer.org%2Fqa%2F

I see very simple optimization opportunities, like compress and minify CSS and JS scripts.  These are so easy to do.  Of course I can do them myself.  I am wondering, why can't the default installation include these optimizations?

BTW, it seems that this Q2A site uses the old version 1.7.4.

Answer 1

even popular platform like wordpress dont come with this kind of optimization by default, plugins like wptotal cache required to enable that.

Similar plugin can be developed for Q2A also but in v1.8 cache option is present. May be it is doing same things, need to check. cache feature is enabled on q2a testing site http://meta.question2answer.info

This Q2A may show 1.7.4 if Gideon just replaced security fix file.

Answer 2

We don't minify CSS and JS by default because we wanted to make it as easy as possible to contribute. Requiring a compile step makes this more difficult.

Besides, gzip makes a much bigger difference in the file size. After that, minifying only saves a few bytes. Although for some reason it looks like the JS files aren't being gzipped on the Q2A site... I'll check into that.

Regarding 1.7.4, Gideon implemented the security fix immediately, but didn't upgrade the rest of the code (few minor fixes that aren't too vital).

Comments

Makes sense.  Thank you.