PageSpeed is not an oracle. Bytes lie much less often than a single score.
I had run code-bude.net long enough to know its little points of friction. A homepage with 22 external CSS files, more than 100 KB of HTML and 1.2 MB PNG title images in listing views was no longer a charming bit of history. Lighthouse estimated 6.25 MB of image savings. The score moved between 27 and 55 depending on the run. That is not a measurement. It is a weather forecast with a very small cloud.
I worked in two rounds. First came images, CSS, critical CSS and fonts. Then I tackled Site Health findings, CLS, accessibility, security headers and icon fonts. The scores are useful […]