Serving 10 billion page views on a few hundred servers, craigslist leads the internet industry by orders of magnitude when it comes to efficient use of electricity. The last time I checked we were clocking something like 175,000 page views per kilowatt-hour.
Compare this to single digit thousands of pages-per-kwhr for most large sites, which typically run tens to hundreds of thousands of servers.^
Sounds mysterious, huh? This whole “green computing” thing must be some wacko technology to cram more pages down the tubes, or maybe they use transparent pages. Far out. Not even close.
Craigslist achieves green computing through three simple methods:
This isn’t just green; it’s common sense. The average web user doesn’t care too much how the page looks, except that they want a nice experience and a good interface. A page that acts upon familiar principles to give them an interface they can intuit and manipulate will make them happy. If it’s not outright ugly, well, they’re fine.
As many of us who have worked the web since the early days know, it’s not the looks of a page but its organization. Did you put the important stuff in the upper right? Can people grasp how the site is navigated with a quick gaze? Is there unnecessary or disorganized stuff on the pages?
Who would have thought that such things are also “green.”