hackaday.com

Readiness by lane

Green: hackaday.com. Thin bar: Programming & Software peer median.

Priority fixes for hackaday.com

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

1. Priority 1 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 1 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   Why it matters: HSTS tells browsers to use HTTPS for your host on every later visit, which removes the window where a first HTTP request can be intercepted.

   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.

   40% of Programming & Software peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 31 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.

   42% of Programming & Software peers do this.

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

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 2 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.

   51% of Programming & Software peers do this.

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

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 31 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.

   56% of Programming & Software peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

What hackaday.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of Programming & Software peers use.

• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.45% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://hackaday.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-11-25

CDN or edge

WordPress VIP

Platform or framework

WordPress

DNS operators

1 self-run or other nameserver domain

HSTS

max-age 1 days

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

96 KB, br

Images on homepage

31 (jpg 16, png 14)

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 Programming & Software sites

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• opencode.ai62

Programming & Software readiness benchmark