Kidlat News: Lightning-fast
Kidlat News started out as an experiment to see whether we could build a viable image-free website.
True to its minimalist roots, Kidlat News articles contain no photos or videos, only text. Where photos or videos are needed, they are indicated with links, not embedded into the articles.
Like this: Kidlat News graffiti
Kidlat News pages, therefore, should load blisteringly fast. No waiting around to read our highly-relevant, slightly out-of-date stories.
Table: Performance grades of selected Philippine news sites
As measured by Pingdom on October 22, 2023 at around 7:00AM. Performance grade 100 is highest.
| News Site | Page Size | Load Time | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kidlat News | 6.9kb | 0.65s | 99 |
| Manila Times | 4,300kb | 1.39s | 81 |
| Rappler | 4,200kb | 1.55s | 67 |
| Inquirer | 11,300kb | 4.16s | 63 |
As can be seen above, Kidlat News’ home page is 1,600 times smaller than Inquirer’s, and loads in just over half a second.
Other text-only websites
Other text-only news sites that we check from time to time are CNN Lite, NPR Text and CBC Lite.