Website readiness profile · Snapshot 23 October 2026
afr.com
afr.com's public homepage, certificate and DNS checked against 31 practices and compared with 3,856 News & Media sites.
- Readiness index
- 77/100
- Ahead of
- 82%
- Practices observed
- 21/29
- Popularity band
- Top 50K
News & Media median 68
of measured News & Media sites
2 of 31 could not be measured
Chrome UX Report top-sites list
Readiness by lane
Green: afr.com. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.
Enable
100/100
Peers 89
Harden
69/100
Peers 56
Accelerate
68/100
Peers 68
Recover
0/100
Peers 11
Priority fixes for afr.com
Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.
Priority 1 · Harden
TLS 1.3 negotiated
Observed: The TLS connection negotiated TLSv1.2.
Why it matters: TLS 1.3 removes legacy cipher suites and completes the handshake in fewer round trips, so it is both safer and faster for new connections.
What to do: Enable TLS 1.3 on your CDN or server. Keep TLS 1.2 available for older clients unless you have checked your audience.
93% of News & Media peers do this. Limit: Certificate and protocol were observed from one vantage point; CDNs can present different certificates by region.
Priority 2 · Accelerate
Offscreen images lazy-loaded
Observed: The homepage had 50 images and none used loading="lazy".
What to do: Add loading="lazy" to images below the fold. Do not lazy-load the main hero image, because that delays the largest visible element.
72% of News & Media peers do this.
Priority 3 · Accelerate
No render-blocking scripts in <head>
Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 1 external script without async or defer.
What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.
42% of News & Media peers do this.
Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page
Priority 4 · Harden
Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less
Observed: The certificate from Sectigo Limited had a 198-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.
What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.
66% of News & Media peers do this.
What afr.com already does well
Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.
- Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.22% of peers
- Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
- HSTS kept for at least a yearHSTS with a 365-day max-age.35% of peers
What we saw
- Homepage checked
- https://www.afr.com/
- Homepage response
- HTTP 200
- TLS
- TLSv1.2, HTTP/2
- Certificate
- Sectigo, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-04-08
- CDN or edge
- Fastly
- DNS operators
- Amazon Route 53
- HSTS
- max-age 365 days
- DMARC policy
- p=reject
- Homepage HTML
- 1,148 KB, gzip
- Images on homepage
- 50 (png 2)
Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.
Stack and providers
Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.
All 31 checks
Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works
Not observed 8
Observed 21
- HSTS kept for at least a year
- Certificate has more than 14 days left
- DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject
- X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
- Framing restricted
- Content Security Policy present
- Referrer-Policy set
- HTTP/2 negotiated
- HTML compressed
- Static files cached for 30 days or more
- Modern image formats in use
- robots.txt published
- XML sitemap discoverable
- Reachable over IPv6
- Canonical URL declared
- Meta description written
- Mobile viewport configured
- Structured data present
- Social preview image set
- Page language declared
- At most one redirect to the homepage
Not measured 2
- HTTP requests move to HTTPS
- security.txt published
Own afr.com?
Re-run the checks after a change, or verify the site in a free workspace to save reports with history, compare against similar sites and competitors, and track a private action plan. What owners get.
Live status for this site: Status Is Down: afr.com. This profile covers configuration only.