archiveofourown.org

Readiness by lane

Green: archiveofourown.org. Thin bar: Online Publishing peer median.

Priority fixes for archiveofourown.org

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 4 hours, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   Why it matters: Returning visitors and later page views reuse cached files instead of downloading them again.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   On Cloudflare: Use Cache Rules to set edge and browser TTLs for static file paths.

   57% of Online Publishing peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Strict-Transport-Security header.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Cloudflare: Enable HSTS under SSL/TLS > Edge Certificates > HTTP Strict Transport Security and raise max-age gradually.

   27% of Online Publishing peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Enable

   Canonical URL declared

   Observed: The homepage did not declare a canonical URL.

   What to do: Add a self-referencing canonical link to every indexable page, using the final https:// URL.

   80% of Online Publishing peers do this.

   Guide: Canonical Tags: A Decision Guide for Duplicate URLs

4. Priority 4 · 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.

   45% of Online Publishing peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

What archiveofourown.org already does well

Practices fewer than half of Online Publishing peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.18% of peers
• Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.20% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.20% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://archiveofourown.org/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Google Trust Services, 90-day validity, expiring 2027-01-03

CDN or edge

Cloudflare

DNS operators

Cloudflare

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

24 KB, br

Images on homepage

1 (png 1)

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

Compare with other Online Publishing sites

• issuu.com67
• manga-lc.net67
• rivistastudio.com68
• slideserve.com68
• yurionair.top68

Online Publishing readiness benchmark