Implement AMP Project framework

thumped

thumped

Well-known member
https://www.ampproject.org/

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an initiative to improve the mobile web and enhance the distribution ecosystem. If content is fast, flexible and beautiful, including compelling and effective ads, we can preserve the open web publishing model as well as the revenue streams so important to the sustainability of quality publishing.

AMP HTML is a new way to make web pages that are optimized to load instantly on users’ mobile devices. It is designed to support smart caching, predictable performance, and modern, beautiful mobile content. Since AMP HTML is built on existing web technologies, and not a template based system, publishers continue to host their own content, innovate on their user experiences, and flexibly integrate their advertising and business models -- all within a technical architecture optimized for speed and performance.
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Upvote 194
I think it's a dangerous proposition to basically make your forum rely on Google like this. I would downvote this if I could.
 
StarArmy said:
I think it's a dangerous proposition to basically make your forum rely on Google like this. I would downvote this if I could.
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This is not something that would make you rely on Google.. (Or am I missing something here? 🤔)

Nothing that prevents this being an optional feature under the "SEO"-options in the ACP..

However, I don't really see why someone would want to disable a feature like this, as it would bring you more traffic and users, unless you ofc want to have a less popular forum :D
 
mazzly said:
This is not something that would make you rely on Google.. (Or am I missing something here? 🤔)
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To load any AMP page you have to download a JavaScript file from Google, and content is served from Google's cache instead of your site.

See:
Recep Baltaş said:
Could you please direct us to an alternative to Google?
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Literally any other server on the internet that's not in Google's ecosystem.
 
Yes, You need the library of AMP. (ampproject.org) But this is only one or more depending on the content.
I don't know where the problem is. You always have to load JS no matter if it is tracking, analysis etc. - this is a problem?
And I included AMP in my SEO add-on and there was no one complaining about the JS files. (which is technically essential)

StarArmy said:
Literally any other server on the internet that's not in Google's ecosystem.
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And of course there are Google opponents! And of course you can find something against AMP. i am not a Google fan now, but still google is something you cannot get around at the moment!
 
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StarArmy said:
To load any AMP page you have to download a JavaScript file from Google, and content is served from Google's cache instead of your site.
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So a small minimal JS file that forces the content to be small and quick to load is worse than multiple large custom JS files that do nasty things?
I don't see why it is a problem that the content is served from their servers instead of mine, fewer resources needed on my end?
StarArmy said:
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First one of those have quite many inaccuracies (AdSense / Analytics), less design I can buy, but then again that depends on what type of site you have.. this being a forum it has very structured content, so it will "look the same" anyway... All styling things I have needed have still worked fine with AMP..

From a personal opinion, having implemented AMP on some of my own custom pages: It forces the content to be semantically correct (yay) and makes the pages faster.

Also, if this was an optional feature, why would it matter if it was "bad" (according to tinfoil-hatters)? Those who don't want it simply wouldn't enable it
 
Isn't loading amp pages from google servers optional? Plus there are official workarounds around that which allows you to show your own URL on google hosted amp pages. Plus it's just one more thing that one has. Like you have sitemaps. It's not like people who hate the domination of google in search space are blocking google spiders from their websites. You do not avoid tools that would give you a potential advantage over your competition.
 
An AMP page is really easy to make. I had one briefly but it was too restrictive in terms of wut sort of code you could use and stuff, so I dumped it.
 
This would be a really important feature for a forum software in the likes of Xenforo.

Just another example of how important AMP traffic is for sites and getting organic traffic through search engines:
A week ago Ezoic (ad network that does magic on DNS level before content is served to user) broke the AMP pages on one of my site by inserting some duplicate tags
-> AMP content became invalid, search console warned me etc.

During the time ( ~2 days ) that Ezoic had this bug, I had 2K less daily visitors (from mobile) and also lost a bunch of revenue.
- Once they fixed the bug, a day later I had back the 2K daily visitors that were lost. (back to 9K/day yay)

So it is very clear to me that for mobile traffic, AMP pages are prioritized in search results (this makes sense as they load instantly which is nice user experience)
- Why shouldn't we have this for our forum discussions as well?

Hypothetical question:
If someone searches on google for a topic that has been discussed in a thread on your forum, it might be position 5 in google results.
If it had an AMP variant google will place that higher, maybe somewhere position 2-4 (because it loads instantly, which is a confirmed ranking factor).
-> This will increase your forums growth, revenue and all other good things that comes along.

I see this as a no-brainer, especially considering how easy the AMP-html is to adapt to, and considering that forum threads and posts are very structured in their content.
 
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mazzly said:
This would be a really important feature for a forum software in the likes of Xenforo.

Just another example of how important AMP traffic is for sites and getting organic traffic through search engines:
A week ago Ezoic (ad network that does magic on DNS level before content is served to user) broke the AMP pages on one of my site by inserting some duplicate tags
-> AMP content became invalid, search console warned me etc.

During the time ( ~2 days ) that Ezoic had this bug, I had 2K less daily visitors (from mobile) and also lost a bunch of revenue.
- Once they fixed the bug, a day later I had back the 2K daily visitors that were lost. (back to 9K/day yay)

So it is very clear to me that for mobile traffic, AMP pages are prioritized in search results (this makes sense as they load instantly which is nice user experience)
- Why shouldn't we have this for our forum discussions as well?

Hypothetical question:
If someone searches on google for a topic that has been discussed in a thread on your forum, it might be position 5 in google results.
If it had an AMP variant google will place that higher, maybe somewhere position 2-4 (because it loads instantly, which is a confirmed ranking factor).
-> This will increase my forums growth, revenue and all other good things that comes along.

I see this as a no-brainer, especially considering how easy the AMP-html is to adapt to, and considering that forum threads and posts are very structured in their content.
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so, I want amp and would pay for an add on that added amp. And I use amp on my news side. And I wish xenforo would implement amp.

I’ve broken amp and regretted it... but I suspect you are talking about a blog or news. AMP for news is a clear benefit. Amp for non news/blog is a little less clear. But I’d still want it. :)

arn
 
arn said:
so, I want amp and would pay for an add on that added amp. And I use amp on my news side. And I wish xenforo would implement amp.
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I would honestly pay 50$ extra on my Xenforo license for this feature, it would pay itself off in no time!

arn said:
I’ve broken amp and regretted it... but I suspect you are talking about a blog or news. AMP for news is a clear benefit. Amp for non news/blog is a little less clear. But I’d still want it. :)
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I've also broken it myself some times :D but easy to validate, and search console will also let me know if I would've missed some.

I see the benefit for almost any type of site that has textual content and that is not a webapp, it is as easy as that.
Most "interactive" elements that could be needed by a web page are supported by AMP anyway, and for those that would require some custom fancy JS it is always possible to send the user to the "real page" to perform that task.
 
Mike said:
Realistically, if we were to try to implement this, you'd likely be looking at an entirely differently styled page because:
  • Markup limits and changes (see more below)
  • Limits to some CSS rules (such as overflow)
  • Limits of CSS length and inclusion method (50,000 bytes and inlined)
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This is totally fine, a css size of 50Kb is a crapton in todays measures.. if you can't fit the markup for forum threads and posts into that, you really need to try harder ;)
Even if it would be a "limited" version, simple things like theme/coloring from admin options could be used to make the forum "still look like your own forum".
Mike said:
One sizable issue is the fact that <img> tags (and all other embeds) require explicit dimensions, which is generally something we don't track. Similarly, media embeds are often done a bit differently, though if they're just iframes they might be ok.
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XF2 doesn't track image dimensions for the attached images? if not maybe it should start to do so? then that problem is solved.

As for "external"/media embeds and the unfurling, maybe for AMP version it would be okay to just place a link to the content without the image (since we might not know the dimensions)
- btw e.g. youtube & reddit embeds are possible in AMP nowadays (probably wasn't back in 2016)

Even if external images are attached, I don't see it as impossible to async fetch the image & get dimensions and store a list of imageurls:dimensions into some list (redis, thread, wherever) and set those when generating the <amp-img> for external resource
- if no dimensions found => url to image until the dimensions are fetched

Mike said:
If you accept that it's going to be a very stripped down version of the page and potentially missing some of the standard components you'd see in posts (particularly if there's any sort of more advanced/interactive features added; spoilers would probably be a good example), then it may be doable, but it would still be a significant feature to add (likely requiring a different "view" type entirely).
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I wholeheartedly accept this as long as you implement AMP so that the text + image content works.
As a result Google (and other search engines in future) will place my forum higher for mobile traffic and I will get more users :)
As I mentioned in above post, advanced features can be left to the "real site", which we can always send the user to easily.


Let's keep the discussions open @Mike and I will help as much as I can to solve your AMP concerns ;)
- But please please please take this as a higher priority, it is one of the most upvoted suggestions, and it seems to be ignored by the XF devs :( (or maybe I'm wrong and you will surprise me in the next release? ;) )
 
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Mike said:
If you accept that it's going to be a very stripped down version of the page and potentially missing some of the standard components you'd see in posts (particularly if there's any sort of more advanced/interactive features added; spoilers would probably be a good example), then it may be doable, but it would still be a significant feature to add (likely requiring a different "view" type entirely).
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We need and accept this because we also want to reach users who live in the country and access the forum at UMTS speed. Therefore, we currently have to do without a lot of graphics and even with this, users have long waiting times for access. AMP is already helping a lot with this. We are of course ready to make the necessary compromises. What are the XF developers waiting for? ;)
 

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