Improving my blog after publishing it

Publishing the first posts did not mean the blog was finished.

Once the site was online, I compared its PageSpeed Insights results with the theme’s demonstration site. My blog scored lower, and I wanted to understand what accounted for the difference.

The useful part of that comparison was finding specific things I could improve.

Looking beyond the score

The reports pointed to a contrast problem in the footer.

The text was readable to me, but that alone did not establish that the contrast was sufficient. The report gave me a concrete issue to investigate instead of a general impression that the page looked fine.

The appearance used during the test also mattered. The light and dark versions needed to be checked separately.

That made the task more specific: improve the footer’s contrast while preserving both appearances.

Keeping the changes manageable

I also wanted to understand how the customizations would behave when the theme received an update.

Using a theme saves work, but maintaining a separate fork would add responsibilities I did not want for this blog.

The changes were kept outside the theme’s files. That makes them easier to preserve, although it does not remove every dependency.

A customization that refers to the theme’s CSS classes or font files can still need adjustment if those details change.

For me, the important distinction was between preserving a change during an update and knowing that it would continue working afterward. A preview and build check still have a purpose.

Deciding whether I wanted analytics

The reports also brought Cloudflare’s analytics script to my attention.

Before trying to optimize it, I asked a more basic question: did I want those statistics?

For this blog, I chose to disable the analytics integration.

That decision addressed a preference about what the site should include. I did not need to move the blog to another hosting provider to make it.

Checking the result

After the adjustments, I obtained scores of 100 in all four PageSpeed Insights categories on both mobile and desktop.

That was the result of those tests. It does not mean every future test will produce the same numbers or that the site has nothing left to improve.

The process gave me something more useful than the score alone: a clearer footer, a better understanding of the theme customizations, and a deliberate decision about analytics.

Publishing made the blog available. Reviewing it afterward helped me understand what I was maintaining.