fbpx
Home » Resources » What is Minify?

What is Minify?

Minification is the process of reducing the file size of a script or stylesheet by removing unnecessary characters, such as white space, comments, and new lines. This can improve the load time of a website by reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred from the server to the client.

Table of contents

How Minification Works
Advantages of Minification
Disadvantages of Minification
Unminified Example:
Minified Example:
Hosted with Koerge?
Conclusion

How Minification Works

  • Minification typically involves running the script or stylesheet through a minifier, which is a program that performs the above mentioned operations.
  • Popular minifiers for JavaScript include UglifyJS, and for CSS include CSSNano and csso.
  • Minifiers can be integrated into build tools like Webpack, Grunt and Gulp.

Advantages of Minification

  • Improved load time: As the file size is reduced, the time it takes for the web page to load is also reduced, which can lead to a better user experience.
  • Reduced bandwidth usage: As the file size is smaller, less data needs to be transferred, which can save on bandwidth costs.
  • Better security: Minification can make it more difficult for malicious actors to understand and exploit the code.

Disadvantages of Minification

  • Harder to debug: Minified code can be difficult to read and understand, which can make it harder to debug.
  • Increased development time: Minification can add an extra step to the development process, which can increase development time.
  • Maintenance: If the minified code needs to be updated, it can be a difficult task.

Unminified Example:

<html>
<head>
<style>
/* awesome-container is only used on the landing page */
.awesome-container { font-size: 120% }
.awesome-container { width: 50% }
</style>
</head>

Minified Example:

<html><head><style>.awesome-container{font-size:120%;width: 50%} </style></head>

Minifying multiple files with thousands of lines of code can help reduce the overall page size, resulting in faster page loads.

Hosted with Koerge?

If you host your website with Koerge you can leverage the Litespeed WordPress plugin that should be installed, this plugin can many options including minification for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. All of these settings can be found under the ‘optimize’ tab within the LiteSpeed plugin.

Conclusion

  • Minification is a useful technique for improving the performance of a website by reducing the file size of scripts and stylesheets.
  • It can improve load time, reduce bandwidth usage, and increase security.
  • However, it can also make code harder to debug, increase development time and make maintenance more difficult.

Other Resources