bostonglobe.com

Readiness by lane

Green: bostonglobe.com. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.

Priority fixes for bostonglobe.com

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 no max-age, 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 WordPress: Caching plugins or your host can set long browser cache lifetimes for theme and plugin assets.

   60% of News & Media 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.

   35% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 7 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On WordPress: WordPress has supported WebP uploads since 5.8 and AVIF since 6.5; image plugins or the host can convert existing images.

   44% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 7 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.

   On WordPress: WordPress has added loading="lazy" to images by default since 5.5; check that your theme or a plugin has not removed it.

   72% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

What bostonglobe.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.37% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.bostonglobe.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-12-15

CDN or edge

Akamai

Platform or framework

WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore

DNS operators

Cloudflare

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

2,650 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

7 (svg 5)

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 News & Media sites

• 24sata.hr63
• axar.az63
• blog-rct.com63
• businessinsider.jp63
• chibanippo.co.jp63

News & Media readiness benchmark