deadline.com

Readiness by lane

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

Priority fixes for deadline.com

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

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 50 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   Why it matters: WebP and AVIF are typically much smaller than JPEG or PNG at similar quality, and images are often the heaviest part of a page.

   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. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

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

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject

   Observed: The DMARC policy for deadline.com was p=none, which asks receivers to take no action on failing mail.

   What to do: Publish DMARC with p=none and a reporting address first, fix any legitimate senders that fail SPF or DKIM alignment, then move to quarantine and finally reject.

   37% of News & Media peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

3. Priority 3 · 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.

   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

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 9 external scripts 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.

   On WordPress: Since WordPress 6.3, scripts can be registered with a defer or async loading strategy.

   42% of News & Media peers do this.

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

What deadline.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• 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
• Framing restrictedFraming controls present.42% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://deadline.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2027-01-16

CDN or edge

WordPress VIP

Platform or framework

WordPress

DNS operators

Amazon Route 53

HSTS

max-age 365 days

DMARC policy

p=none

Homepage HTML

802 KB, br

Images on homepage

50 (jpg 16)

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

• dailypost.co.uk69
• dailyrecord.co.uk69
• dailystar.co.uk69
• defence24.pl69
• deraktionaer.de69

News & Media readiness benchmark