rcsb.org

Readiness by lane

Green: rcsb.org. Thin bar: Literary & Knowledge peer median.

Priority fixes for rcsb.org

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 185 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.

   28% of Literary & Knowledge 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

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 5 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.

   48% of Literary & Knowledge peers do this.

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

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.

   67% of Literary & Knowledge peers do this.

   Guide: Canonical Tags: A Decision Guide for Duplicate URLs

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   Offscreen images lazy-loaded

   Observed: The homepage had 52 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.

   48% of Literary & Knowledge peers do this.

   Guide: Lazy Loading Without Broken Pages

What rcsb.org already does well

Practices fewer than half of Literary & Knowledge peers use.

• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.22% of peers
• Modern image formats in useWebP or AVIF images detected.31% of peers
• HTTP/3 advertisedHTTP/3 advertised.47% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.rcsb.org/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

InCommon, LLC, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-01-27

DNS operators

NS1

HSTS

max-age 185 days, includeSubDomains, preload

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

82 KB, br

Images on homepage

52 (png 36, jpg 10, webp 5, svg 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 Literary & Knowledge sites

• nettruyen13s.com63
• odbm.org63
• orcid.org63
• roman-one1.com63
• sinonimos.com.br63

Literary & Knowledge readiness benchmark