Environmental Talks for WordPress Developers and Designers
There is a small, but growing, number of WordPress developers who are interested in environmental issues.
WordPress now runs an incredible 40% of all websites. The work that we do has an impact. If WordPress sites consume large amounts of energy, then that has knock-on effects for the whole web.
I've searched for some of the best introductions to this topic. The people in the videos below are talented WordPress designers and developers, who want their work to have a positive impact.
“A Study in Green” with Tom Greenwood and Josh Stopper
Tom and Josh tell the story of how and why they developed WebsiteCarbon.com which analyzes the energy usage of web projects. For their own projects, the outcome was a 75% reduction in carbon emissions, greatly improved page load speed and better user experience. We interviewed Tom last year and he has just published a new book: “Sustainable Web Design“.
“Environmentally friendly WordPress development” with Jaakko Alajoki
I really enjoyed this session: it's 10 minutes long, and Jaakko has a great sense of humor. He is the CTO of Evermade, an agency in Finland. He ran a series of experiments to see how to save energy with his WordPress projects.
“How Better Performing Websites Can Help Save the Planet” with Jack Lenox
Jack is a Design Engineer for Automattic. We recently wrote about Branch from Mozilla, one of Jack's recent projects. It's a fascinating new publication that uses WordPress and whose focus is making sure our technology helps build a sustainable world. Jack helped to make sure that the WordPress technology matched the goals of the site. In this session, Jack gives a big-picture overview of why WordPress developers should practice sustainable web design.
“Low-Carbon Web Design” with Jenn Schlick
Jenn works for the MIT Energy Initiative (that site is in WordPress, of course). Even more than Jack's session, she steps back to explain why we should care about building environmentally friendly WordPress sites. She recommends Ecograder.com, which was built by Tim Frick who we recently interviewed.
How Green is Your Website? with Hannah Smith
Hannah Smith is a WordPress freelancer from Bristol in the U.K.. She was the co-organizer of the Bristol WordPress meetup and now runs the Green Tech South West group. We talked with Hannah last year. In this videocast, Hannah discusses easy ways we can operate our agencies to reduce our carbon footprint.
More interviews on WordPress
- Johannes Benz on hosting that’s good for the Environment and Society.
- Phil Sturgeon on being a developer and planting 1000's of trees.
- Tim Frick on building better WordPress businesses with B Corps.
- Tom Greenwood on sustainable WordPress sites and businesses.
- Zack Katz on values-drive WordPress businesses.
- Hannah Smith on the environmental impact of WordPress.
- Steve Beatty on the Newspack project.
- The Tag1 Consulting team on YJS and collaborative editing in Gutenberg.