In this article, we will explore the concrete criteria of digital sobriety , as well as the levers offered by the Drupal CMS to achieve them when developing digital projects.
In the photo we can see a computer with a plant growing on its keyboard
The Criteria for Digital Sobriety
1. Specialized repositories and analysis tools
To assess digital sobriety, several benchmarks and tools are available:
The reference framework of 115 good practices from the Green IT association ;
The ecoindex.fr site which allows you to quickly evaluate sites according to 3 criteria;
The Green IT Analysis browser extension , which performs the same assessment as the ecoindex.fr site, while also analyzing best practices;
The General Framework for Eco-Design of Digital Services (RGESN), issued by the State, which brings together best practices concerning all phases of an IT project, from strategy to maintenance.
> Ecoindex.fr
This website allows you to evaluate a URL quickly and easily according to 3 criteria:
The weight of the page in bytes;
The complexity of the page in terms of the number of elements in the DOM;
The number of requests .
The result of the analysis is presented in the form of a grade between A and G. This is supplemented by a score between 0 and 100. The higher the grade, the better!
Screenshot of an analysis result by the ecoindex.fr tool. The truemoney database analyzed website obtained the grade E with a score of 30/100.Example of an analysis result from the ecoindex.fr site
Small downside, even if this site is effective in its evaluation, it does not provide any concrete areas for improvement.
> The Green IT Analysis browser extension
Recommended by the ecoindex.fr website, the Green IT Analysis browser extension is very useful for a more in-depth analysis of your URL.
Indeed, in addition to the 3 criteria evaluated by the ecoindex.fr site, Green IT Analysis reviews 21 good practices from the Green IT association's benchmark. In addition, this extension provides very concrete avenues for improvement .
Screenshot of a result obtained with the Green IT Analysis extensionExample of a result obtained with the Green IT Analysis extension
And this extension has 2 other advantages :
It allows you to evaluate unindexed pages ;
And, thanks to an analysis retention feature, it can compare results over time .
Please note that other extensions installed on your browser and the browser cache can distort your results. For them to be accurate and consistent, it is therefore advisable to use a browser that is completely free of any other extensions, dedicated solely to analysis, and emptied of its browser cache at each analysis.
2. Web quality and performance
In an approach of digital sobriety, it is interesting to use tools and benchmarks linked to web quality and performance.
For example , Google PageSpeed Insights allows you to delve deeper into performance issues.
Another solution with the Opquast Reference , which promotes a transverse quality going in the direction of simpler and more effective interaction with users of websites, and which indirectly contributes to an eco-design approach.
Ebook
Digital eco-design: all the best practices
Download the ebook
The levers of digital sobriety with Drupal
The 4 major levers of Green IT: Limit the complexity of pages - Limit the weight of pages - Limit the number of requests - Limit server requests
1. Limit page complexity
Screenshot of the analysis result for the page complexity criterion
According to the ecoindex.fr website, the target is 600 elements in the DOM. Thus, the more elements the DOM contains, the more complex the page is to decipher and therefore the longer it takes to display in the browser.
> What is the DOM?
The DOM or Document Object Model is the representation of the HTML source, in the form of an API, created by the browser. It allows, for example, JavaScript to dynamically modify the elements of the page.
> What are the possible actions?
Reduce editorial and functional content to a minimum;
Do not duplicate elements, especially for the mobile version;
Adopt the most efficient HTML structure possible (be careful with the CMS which generates a lot of it);
Be careful with SVG in the form of a tag whose elements will be integrated into the DOM. If an SVG does not have any material to be altered by a JS script or a precise path colored dynamically, it is better to have an image tag, but be careful with the number of requests, or an icon font.
