In order to improve the mobile user’s experience by making mobile pages faster, as well as to respond to Facebook’s Instant Articles initiative, Google has published a new project, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). In cooperation with publishers and technology companies, Google has decided to\u00a0put content at the forefront of the mobile experience.<\/p>\n
As with all new Google initiatives, there has been\u00a0active discussion about AMP since its release, and it has elicited the usual love\/hate reactions.\u00a0Obviously, this new trend\u00a0will\u00a0affect the WordPress ecosystem as well. As a company that aims to make the Web faster, easier and better, we have been getting a lot of questions about AMP and how it affects WordPress sites and performance.<\/p>\n
In plain English, AMP provides faster and lighter versions of your web pages delivered to mobile users that puts the primary\u00a0focus on content, by eliminating all unnecessary scripts and elements. That means users will get very fast pages, pages that load instantly. On the other hand, the ability\u00a0to control the functionality\u00a0of AMP pages will be limited.<\/p>\n
The AMP Project relies on AMP HTML, AMP JS and Google AMP Cache:<\/p>\n
AMP HTML<\/strong> is a tailor-made\u00a0version of HTML used for displaying AMP pages. It removes some standard HTML tags such as frame, frameset, object, param etc. Also, in AMP HTML some tags are replaced by specific AMP tags – img with amp-img, video with amp-video, audio with amp-audio etc. That’s not all, there is a full list of rules that should be followed<\/a> in order to use AMP HTML properly.<\/p>\n AMP JS<\/strong>\u00a0is\u00a0library that provides\u00a0built-in\u00a0AMP Components used to load pages faster by managing loading of external resources, sandboxing of iframes, pre-calculation of layout, disabling slow CSS selectors etc.<\/p>\n Google AMP Cache\u00a0<\/strong>is AMP’s CDN that ensures even faster delivery of content. It works as a proxy based CDN and uses HTTP 2.0 origin.<\/p>\n As we get a lot of different questions about this new project, it’s important to make a few things clear.<\/p>\n If you are wondering whether you would be able to use AMP as a caching system for your site or not, the answer is – No. AMP\u00a0is not a caching system<\/strong>. It doesn’t affect desktop versions of websites at all.<\/p>\n It is not a CDN either. AMP can be considered as a new, custom-made technology for mobile devices rather than a caching or \u00a0CDN system\/replacement.<\/p>\n Another possible misunderstanding of this concept is identifying AMP as a mobile theme for your site. Here we have another “No”. AMP is not a mobile theme for your website<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In these days when WordPress powers\u00a026% of websites, whenever there is a new development like this, the question on everybody’s lips, is of course, “is there a plugin for that?” It will take little\u00a0effort if you want to\u00a0implement AMP on\u00a0your WordPress-powered website. All\u00a0you have to do is to install and run one of these plugins:<\/p>\n At this very moment, the easiest, most painless way would be to run Automattic’s AMP plugin. Although limited when we talk about freedom of customization, it focuses on delivering AMP version of your articles, and it does it well. PageFrog and Templatic AMP are built on top of Automattic’s plugin, and these give more customization options through the admin panel.<\/p>\n This is one of the most\u00a0frequent\u00a0questions we received. The answer is:<\/p>\nWhat AMP Is NOT<\/h2>\n
Can I use AMP as a mobile cache for my site?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Can I use AMP as a mobile CDN?<\/h3>\n
Can I use AMP as a mobile theme for my site?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
AMP and WordPress<\/h2>\n
\nAs is usually the case, the answer is \u00a0“yes!”<\/p>\n\n
AMP and WP Rocket<\/h2>\n
Do I still need WP Rocket?<\/h3>\n