The 512KB Club

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The internet has become a bloated mess. Massive JavaScript libraries, countless client-side queries and overly complex frontend frameworks are par for the course these days.

When online newspapers like The Guardian are over 4MB in size, you know there’s a problem. Why does an online newspaper need to be over 4MB in size? It’s crazy.

But we can make a difference - all it takes is some optimisation. Do you really need that extra piece of JavaScript? Does your WordPress site need a theme that adds lots of functionality you’re never going to use? Are those huge custom fonts really needed? Are your images optimised for the web?

The 512KB Club is a collection of performance-focused web pages from across the Internet. To qualify your website must satisfy both of the following requirements:

  1. It must be an actual site that contains a reasonable amount of information, not just a couple of links on a page (more info here).
  2. Your total UNCOMPRESSED web resources must not exceed 512KB.
How to join The 512KB Club

If you're interested in getting your site added to The 512KB Club, all you need to do is follow these instructions:

  1. Do a GTMetrix scan on your website.
  2. Once complete, click on the Waterfall tab to make sure the uncompressed size of your site is less than 512KB.
  3. If your site satisfies this requirement, create a pull request (instructions here) to add your site.
  4. I will then review you PR and merge it into main. Once merged, your site will be added to the list.

Note: I reserve the right to not add sites based on whether I think they're suitable to be added or not.

Once you're in The 512KB Club

If your site qualifies for The 512KB Club, I will add it to one of the following 3 teams:

  1. The green team is for sites with a total uncompressed size of less than 100KB.
  2. The orange team is for sites with a total uncompressed size of less than 250KB.
  3. The blue team is for sites with a total uncompressed size of less than 512KB.

Once you're a proud member of one of the teams, you are free to use one of the banners below on your own website. You can either save the SVG or use the code snippet below (remembering to change the name to whichever team you're in).

green team banner

orange team banner

blue team banner

<a href="https://512kb.club"><img src="https://512kb.club/assets/images/green-team.svg" /></a>

Alternatively, you can add the banner to your site in pure HTML/CSS using this CodePen as a guide.

I've optimised some more, what now?

The 512KB Club appears to have sparked some interest in a lot of website owners and the whole thing has become somewhat of a race to the top.

If you have optimised your website further and want to change your number, please log a new GitHub Pull Request ensuring the title clearly states this is an update.

My site doesn't qualify, what can I do?

Many sites won't qualify for the 512KB Club, but there are some quick things you could try to reduce the size of your site:

1. Replace custom fonts with a local font stack by replacing your font-family declerations in your CSS to one of the following:

# Sans-serif font stack
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Avenir Next", Avenir, "Nimbus Sans L", Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, Helvetica, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;

# Serif font stack
font-family: Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif;

2. Optimise any images you have on your page. Short Pixel is a great service for this.

3. If all else fails and your site is pretty close the 512KB, but not quite there, why not apply for Bradley Taunt's 1MB Club instead?

What's the point of all this?

That's a great question!

I decided to start this project for a couple of reasons:

  1. Most, if not all, of the sites listed below are personal sites. Many of which are blogs. The 512KB Club is a great way of discovering other blog owners who are also interested in minimalist/efficient web design. Think of it like a modern day webring.
  2. It's a bit of fun, so why not?
I see a problem / how do I get in touch?

See a problem on this site? Maybe there's a site listed that's not longer live, or no longer qualifies for the club. Or, maybe you just want to get in touch for some reason.

If so, create an issue on GitHub or use the contact page on my main website.

Notice about ultra lightweight sites

There are a growing number of "sites" being submitted to The 512KB Club that are ultra lightweight (usually <1KB). These sites often contain absolutely no information apart from a couple of links to other pages that do contain information.

These sites are not in keeping with the aim of The 512KB Club and will not be added. To be added to this site the page you submit must contain a reasonable amount of information.

But what qualifies as a "reasonable amount of information"?

Great question! Ultimately it's for me to decide and I will use my own discretion, but as a guide, if your site contains nothing more than a title and a couple of links, it won't be added. If you page contains some CSS formatting, a couple of paragraphs of text, and links to other pages, it will probably be added.

The aim of The 512KB Club is to showcase lightweight websites. Anyone can create a website that is under 1KB, but composed only of a single h1 tag and a couple of links. That's boring - try and be more interesting.


The Green Team (<100KB) ^ Top ^

The Orange Team (<250KB) ^ Top ^

The Blue Team (<512KB) ^ Top ^