Gutenberg Times Live Q & A
What is AMP?
AMP or an Accelerated Mobile Page is an HTML page that is lightweight and stripped down. The mobile user gets a much-improved experience: content is faster, more engaging, and easier-to-read.
https://www.conductor.com/blog/2018/10/what-is-amp/
- AMP plugin for WP 1.2 – introduced recently.
- Open source project
- HTML framework
- Built for speed
- Cross-browser compatible
- Nothing proprietary
- Huge complement to your existing site
- Provides an RSS feed
- Restrictions: ads cannot be inserted that would interrupt user-experience
AMP plugin for WordPress
- Gathers CSS into single style element – “tree-shaker”
- 50kb limit on CSS
- GoDaddy Primer, Genesis, and a few other themes just added AMP compatibility
- Building site from scratch with AMP compatibility is easier than modifying an existing one.
- Can switch off overall AMP feature and just keep the AMP stories
- AMP Stories are mobile-first
- Live stories are on the agenda for the future of AMP
Favorite AMP Stories
- Washington Post story about war in Yemen. Was first AMP story to win a Pulitzer Prize.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/amp-stories/photos-of-war-in-yemen/ - San Francisco Chronicle Camp Fire Ballet: https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/visuals/camp-fire-ballet/
- National Geographic
- Travel sites
Resources and Best Practices
- https://amp.dev/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/ http://amp.dev
- https://cathibosco.com/
- custom styles for blocks should be enqueued
- If your site already loads quickly and provides a good UX, there’s no need to install AMP. Site should load within 4-5 seconds. Google will not penalize site for not using AMP.
- Images and videos should be optimized. AMP will give a warning about size and optimization. Loading of images won’t happen until you get close to the page with the story.
- Videos cannot be resized by WP