Our web host is going to be upgrading the version of MySQL on their servers next week so there will be some brief down time.
While the new version is backwards compatible I know how these things can go. I'm just hoping that all my queries (especially the REGEXP based ones used for search) are still going to work.
They should do.
Jim Neilsen has an option on his site which lets you change how you view it. He references a talk by Kyle Simpson from 2019 in which he "suggests the idea of building websites in layers of fidelity instead of layers of technology."
You can choose to view Jim's site in one of three ways:
We get used to virtually 'all you can eat' data but there are countries where data is significantly more expensive so reducing 'web fidelity' could save people money. There are also times when networks may be overloaded (emergency situations) so text-only can be a great help.
I was inspired to try something similar and started work on an alternative theme and using a session variable to control the loading of images and scripts.
It got a bit complex so I stopped.
I know my CSS is far too complicated and that I need to find a better way to do various things (grid layouts perhaps) but the site is reasonably minimal and performs well on speed tests. The largest elements are, obviously, images, video and audio.
As a compromise, I have added a toggle in the top of the menu tray to toggle media by setting a session variable (not a persistent cookie).
It currently causes images in posts to be converted to links (when using my content filter to display webp versions) but will be extended for all images, audio and video.
These links can then be opened at leisure rather than loaded automatically.
