The internet's data emissions alone account for CO2 emissions on par with the entire aviation industry*. Therefore, we, as website builders, have a responsibility.
The GoPublic platform enables reduced CO2 emissions. Key factors include green hosting, caching, and intelligent loading of fonts, images, and videos.
*Source: Science Stories, 2020
Hetzner hosts GoPublic websites in Germany at data centres powered by 100% carbon-neutral hydroelectric and wind power, as well as energy-efficient hardware. This is why GoPublic sites generally perform well in online tests such as The Green Web Foundation.
On OLED screens, brighter pixels consume more energy. Dark mode uses far less energy than traditional white backgrounds, making a significant impact. Therefore, the backend of GoPublic is set to dark mode by default with an option for light mode for those who prefer it. This not only enhances energy efficiency but also offers a user-friendly interface.
Because GoPublic is a SaaS solution, the surplus capacity on the servers is shared among all customers. This ensures ample excess capacity for each individual solution, as not all customer sites experience peak load simultaneously. This approach significantly differs from having to allocate server capacity for each customer separately, promoting efficiency and sustainability.
Every time a page on a website without HTML and CSS caching is loaded, the server's CPU works to render the elements on that page. This process is repeated each time the user navigates to a new page on the website. GoPublic uses intelligent caching, so that HTML, CSS, and scripts are served without requiring technical rendering.
This not only results in a significantly faster site but also a much greener site.
In GoPublic, images and videos are optimised to use as little data as possible while still delivering the highest quality to the user. All media files on GoPublic sites are displayed in the WebP and WebM formats, ensuring that videos and images take up significantly less space when loaded in the browser. This results in faster load times for the end user and significantly reduced energy consumption, contributing to a more sustainable web experience
GoPublic utilises lazy loading, meaning that the content on a given page is only rendered when a user or browser needs it. Individual content pages are loaded progressively from top to bottom. This saves loading time and reduces CO2 emissions from, for example, content below the fold that may not be viewed anyway.
Fonts in GoPublic are always variable. This ensures that no unused fonts are loaded. In this way, only the specific styles and font weights used in a design are displayed and loaded, minimising CO2 emissions.
Data storage itself is a carbon guzzler. With the built-in Media Cleaner, it's easy for the editor to get an overview and delete unused images, videos and PDFs, which often take up a lot of space on the server. This minimises energy consumption and makes the solution easier to work with.