redstate.com

Readiness by lane

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

Priority fixes for redstate.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 60 seconds, 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 Cloudflare: Use Cache Rules to set edge and browser TTLs for static file paths.

   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: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 30 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   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 110 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 Cloudflare: Cloudflare Polish can convert images to WebP.

   44% of News & Media peers do this.

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

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject

   Observed: No DMARC record was found at _dmarc.redstate.com.

   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

What redstate.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.

• HTTP/3 advertisedHTTP/3 advertised.36% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://redstate.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Google Trust Services, 90-day validity, expiring 2027-01-19

CDN or edge

Cloudflare

DNS operators

Cloudflare

HSTS

max-age 30 days

Homepage HTML

184 KB, br

Images on homepage

110 (jpg 58, svg 42, png 10)

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

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News & Media readiness benchmark