Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jono Alderson @jono.id · 15h

I’ve been investigating dead websites for years.

Same symptoms every time - bloated code, missing structure, too many dependencies and not enough care.

It’s not murder. It’s neglect.

And it’s everywhere.

www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-dea...

The death of a website

The call came in after midnight. Another site down. Same pattern. Same rot. Somebody’s killing the web, and nobody’s talking.

www.jonoalderson.com

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 16h

Yay ty!

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

react.dev @react.dev · 1d

Introducing the React Foundation

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 1d

Ooh, got a link to the deck?

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Barry Pollard @tunetheweb.com · 1d

I mentioned before that we’re switching Lighthouse Performance audits to the new and improved Insights. The same Insights that you can see in DevTools Performance panel traces.

That’s happening in Lighthouse 13 due to be released very soon. Maybe even this week!

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 12d

Yeah, this is super super cool

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Oliver H.G. Mason 📉 @ohgm.co.uk · 16d

For some reason when people say 'potential audience' or 'ideal customer' I'm fine, but as soon as they say 'persona' I think they are being too cowardly to admit they enjoy astrology.

1. I am being unfair.
but also
2. I have never seen personas applied in a way that didn't leave me more confused.

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 14d

Your brand isn’t what people say about you. It’s what machines remember about you. And they don’t forget.

Every slow page, broken checkout, and bad datapoint leaves a scar. Scars spread, harden, and make you invisible.

That’s the machine immune system at work.

www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/m...

Marketing against the machine immune system

The future of marketing isn’t storytelling. It’s engineering trust into the systems that machines depend on.

www.jonoalderson.com

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 16d

My site passes! 😀

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 16d

🚨 New tool: Impolighthouse

Not just “how fast is my site?”, but “why is it slow, and what does that say about our org?”

A deliberately impolite wrapper on top of Lighthouse, that calls out your organizational cruft, blockers & bad decisions.

www.jonoalderson.com/impolighthou...

Impolighthouse

Get brutally honest performance feedback that actually tells you what's wrong and how to fix it.

www.jonoalderson.com

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 18d

The browser is striking back.

Bloated stacks, fragile abstractions, bad defaults - it’s all catching up with us.

I’ll dig into all of this at Web Directions Dev Summit, Nov 19–20 (Sydney + online).

💸 Codes: jonodevsummit25 / jonodevsummit25streaming

webdirections.org/dev-summit

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Shane Jones @shane.co.uk · 20d

1999 - Notepad
2001 - Frontpage
2003 - Notepad++
2005 - Dreamweaver
2008 - Sublime Text
2016 - VS Code
2025 - Cursor

What does your Web Development journey look like?

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 20d

Identical!

Reposted by Jono Alderson

Stef Walter @stephaniewalter.bsky.social · 21d

How many HTML tags can you remember? No cheating!
By Paul Foster

codepen.io/plfstr/full/...

Screenshot of a webpage titled HTML Tags Memory Test, with a blue background, a text field labeled Tag for entering guesses, and a numbered list of 45 recalled HTML tags including dl, dt, html, body, head, footer, div, p, h1 to h6, strong, em, link, and table.

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Barry Pollard @tunetheweb.com · 21d

Great post from @erwinhofman.bsky.social on webperf Interop proposals:

www.rumvision.com/blog/interop...

Upvote your favourite ones to let us know which are important to you!

Interop 2026: Key APIs for sitespeed & RUM

Real User Monitoring

www.rumvision.com

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Mark Williams-Cook @markwilliamscook.com · 21d

If I ever say "Playbook" non-ironically, you have permission to delete my social media.

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 23d

The Times appears to have interviewed an 'ex Buckingham Palace cleaner' who supposedly divulges royal stain removal secrets but doesn't seem to exist, is possibly AI, and probably placed by a PR agency to boost SEO for a tiling brand.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/royal-c...

Royal cleaner stories removed by Times and Sun after authenticity questions

Stories featuring a ‘royal cleaner’ who claimed to have worked for the Royals have been withdrawn over questions about their authenticity.

pressgazette.co.uk

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 26d

Yep.

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · 26d

I also wonder why the actual SEO people don't take tech seriously.

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Will Kennard @willkennard.com · 27d

WebFlow has built in support for LLMs.txt lol

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Will Kennard @willkennard.com · 27d

“The name is misleading. no-cache actually means “store this, but revalidate before reusing it.”

Finally finished @jono.id guide to caching, took me about a week 🤣

www.jonoalderson.com/performance/...

A complete guide to HTTP caching

Despite being so fundamental, caching is one of the most misunderstood aspects of web performance.

www.jonoalderson.com

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Reposted by Jono Alderson

Sitebulb @sitebulb.com · Sep 9

You’re loading fonts wrong (and it’s crippling your performance) - via @jono.id‬ #seo

You’re loading fonts wrong (and it’s crippling your performance)

Fonts are one of the most visible, most powerful parts of the web. And yet: almost everyone gets them wrong.

bit.ly

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · Sep 4

It's sad that we've normalised SEO conferences - that claim to educate on best practices - being openly sponsored by parasitical link vendors.

That’s not just tone deaf; it’s disengenuous, hypocritical, and sells our classrooms those least interested in education and evolution.

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · Sep 3

Most brand blogs are a waste of time.

Not because content doesn’t work - but because you’re doing it wrong.

Keyword sausage machines, “Admin” bylines, cautious filler…

It’s industrialised mediocrity, and it serves no purpose.

www.jonoalderson.com/conjecture/s...

If you want your blog to sell, stop selling

Stop trying to make every page a conversion engine. Accept that ads and content are different things. Be useful, be generous, be memorable.

www.jonoalderson.com

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Jono Alderson @jono.id · Sep 3

Oh wow, yes. Flashbacks.

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