What makes edi a sustainable website builder?

In crafting edi, we put our heart into making sustainability a key focus in everything we do. We are dedicated to finding the perfect harmony between aesthetics and and sustainability. Let's dive into the exciting journey of creating ultra-light pages that are green-hosted.

Modern tech stack

We've chosen Astro for building our websites because it's the fastest static site generator out there. It creates static sites with server-side rendering and no default JavaScript. We keep things lightweight by minimizing assets and code. Plus, we focus on speed by caching content and being selective with third-party scripts.

Green hosting

Cloudflare aligns perfectly with our tech setup. Their strong sustainability commitment includes using 100% renewable energy and plans to offset all historical emissions by 2025. Learn more in their 2023 impact report.

“Cloudflare is committed to powering its network with 100% renewable energy and offsetting or removing all historical emissions associated with powering its network by 2025.”

By allowing website builds in eco-friendly regions, offering fair pricing, and ensuring excellent availability, they stand out as one of the most transparent hosting providers in terms of sustainability. Their CDN is tailored to our globally distributed user base, and as we grow, we look forward to exploring additional infrastructure options.

Layout efficiency

An opinionated building experience to make sure it’s stays light. We're keeping it clean and straightforward with our design. No background videos or flashy animations. Instead, we're opting for a vibrant color palette and plenty of white space. Our focus is on clarity and functionality, ensuring a user-friendly experience without distractions.

Lightweight images

We employ webP or AVIF formats over JPEG or PNG, compress images, and use responsive images to enhance performance. We support natively SVGs, so that you can use this format for large illustration instead of uploading large images reducing the overall page load.

Fonts

For headings, we offer the flexibility to choose one custom font, allowing you to infuse your brand's personality into key elements. We opted for WOFF2 over TTF, we strategically subset fonts to include only the necessary glyphs and font weights.

In the case of body text, we've opted for the system default font. While this decision may limit font pairing possibilities, the majority of users, without a trained eye, often don't perceive a noticeable difference between a custom body font and the system default option.

Low-mode

Our signature feature is "Low-mode." When visitors access your website, they can switch to an ultra-light version of the pages, ensuring a graceful degradation. This capability is powered by Sustainable UI, a successful project that emerged won in a Carbonhack 2022.

Unlike conventional location-based controls for Branch magazine or Organic Basics, we have implemented a user-controlled approach. This allows users to seamlessly switch between the regular version and Low-mode, providing a more customized browsing experience. In the future, we are looking forward for user to be able to setup in their browser energy saving mode and anticipate user preferences by offering the low version of a website proactively.

Accessibility

Ensuring accessibility and inclusivity are key priorities for us. We adhere to WCAG Compliance. For example, when it comes to colors we are striving for at least AA standards, often reaching AAA, to guarantee that our website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.

Digital inclusivity

We ensure that websites built with edi remain accessible to a wide audience, even for people with older devices. This approach not only promotes inclusivity but also encourages the prolonged use of older devices, reducing the necessity for frequent upgrades to new ones.