Reduce Load Time for Your Blog
Posted on August 16, 2007
Load time for a blog is a really big deal. How well you economize your page will in part determine the amount of traffic to your site. Even though many users are on broadband, there is still a good percent of traffic coming from slow connections due to existing dial-up, wireless and international traffic.
There are simple steps to take that will have immediate affect on load time.
- Clear the cache on your browser and reload the page. If you notice significant lag in the time it takes your page to load, other users are surely experiencing the same wait or longer. Ask others to provide feedback on their experience.
- Use a blog layout that loads the content on the left and the sidebar on the right or in the footer. Web pages load from left to right and top to bottom. Even if it takes a while for the sidebar to load, your users can glean the latest information without having to wait for the widgets. This is my single biggest complaint/frustration with sites. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to publish a relatively quick loading page. If you wish to have, in the words of Scott at MyThermos.com, a lot of "blog bling", then load it second after the main content.
- Constantly evaluate the benefit of sidebar features. Don’t be afraid to drop widgets or plug-ins to economize. A Minimalist perspective will serve you well.
- Keep dynamic content from other sites to a minimum. Remember, the user will not only experience lag from your site, but lag from the other server as well.
Most blogs are by their very nature personal and the bells and whistles are part of that expression. Some authors seem to depend on those features to spice-up their site and draw traffic. If you author a blog, be passionate, relentless in pursuit of your story, your purpose and don’t let the load time inhibit users from appreciating your hard work.
You will notice I’ve recently added listening capability to my blog with Odiogo. This feature does affect load time. I’m committed to making my site as reachable across as many languages and user accessibility as possible. This is a deliberate decision knowing full-well that it can have a negative impact on traffic levels. I hope some of you find it useful and that the content is worth the slightly slower load time. Let me know if it proves valuable to you. With this feature in mind I need to trade-off on other aspects of the site to not overload the page with "blog bling". I’m giving myself a shorter leash.
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Filed Under Web and Tech Helps, user interface, Blog Tip |
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2 Responses to “Reduce Load Time for Your Blog”
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So I’ve cleaned up a bit. Still have more to do. Ever the restless blogger. But I have stopped visiting some sites I actually like because not only do they take a long time to load, they actually freeze and I have to force quit to get out. It’s annoying. Is mine slow? I’ve noticed that Blog Log takes a while to load sometimes…but I love the avatars, because it helps me pay attention to those I enjoy reading. I need to think more about feeds and question how many of those I’m hooked up with…
Kelly, Yep I hear ya. While I’ve used feeds for quite a while, I’m now starting to get much more serious about them as the time savings, load time for sites etc. It’s a never ending challenge to assimilate info quickly and not get bogged-down in the process.