Why does my bernard site load faster?
Most websites are rebuilt from scratch every time someone visits - a program wakes up, talks to a database, assembles the page and sends it over. That is work repeated on every single visit, and it shows in the loading.
The prompt
“Check my whole site for anything making pages heavier than they need to be, especially oversized images, and list what you find - don’t change anything until I choose.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
A bernard site is built differently. Every page is made once, in advance, into plain files, and served from a fast network close to your visitor. There is no database to wake and almost nothing for a server to do, so each page is smaller to send and quicker to arrive. You can see your own before and after, with real Google scores, on the Home screen in bernard once your site is moved in.
The one thing that can still slow a bernard page down is a heavy image, so that is the place to look first. Ask your AI to find oversized images and swap them for sensibly sized ones - the prompt above does exactly that, and nothing changes until you approve it.
For the longer story of how the pages are built lighter and the hosting kept greener, see How Bernard builds.
Questions people ask
- Why is my bernard site faster than my old one?
- Most sites are rebuilt from scratch on every visit, which takes time on every page load. A bernard site is built once, in advance, into plain files and served from a fast network close to your visitor, so the finished page is already there and simply handed over. Less to do means less waiting.
- Does a faster site help me get found?
- It helps. Search engines and AI assistants favour pages that load quickly, especially on phones, and visitors are far less likely to leave before a fast page has finished arriving. So a lighter page is both easier to find and more likely to keep the person who found it. If you then ask your AI to lighten any heavy images, that swap sits on a draft until you approve it, so nothing changes by surprise.