musictheory.net

Readiness by lane

Green: musictheory.net. Thin bar: Education & Online Learning peer median.

Priority fixes for musictheory.net

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

1. Priority 1 · Enable

   XML sitemap discoverable

   Observed: No sitemap was listed in robots.txt or found at /sitemap.xml.

   Why it matters: A sitemap helps search engines find new and updated pages, especially on large or frequently updated sites.

   What to do: Generate an XML sitemap of canonical URLs, reference it in robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console.

   65% of Education & Online Learning peers do this. Limit: Only the standard location was requested, once, at the time of the check.

   Guide: XML Sitemap Guide: Include Only URLs You Stand Behind

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject

   Observed: No DMARC record was found at _dmarc.musictheory.net.

   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.

   36% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 4 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.

   32% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

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

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.

   42% of Education & Online Learning peers do this.

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

What musictheory.net already does well

Practices fewer than half of Education & Online Learning peers use.

• CAA records limit who can issue certificatesCAA limits issuance to letsencrypt.org.13% of peers
• Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.27% of peers
• HSTS kept for at least a yearHSTS with a 365-day max-age.34% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.musictheory.net/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-12-22

DNS operators

Linode/Akamai DNS

HSTS

max-age 365 days

Homepage HTML

5 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

4 (png 7, jpg 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 Education & Online Learning sites

• icsi.edu65
• mockers.in65
• musicca.com65
• onlinepianist.com65
• samacheerkalvi.guide65

Education & Online Learning readiness benchmark