3 Reasons Your Christian Blog Loads Slower Than A Snail Race
May 24th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
So, you’re probably noticed that you can read through War and Peace twice before your blog is fully loaded, right? The slow loading makes your blog feel as if it’s not user friendly, and as far as blogs are concerned, this is the kiss of death. If you’re all about ensuring that new visitors never return to your blog again, go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing. If, on the other hand, you would like to attract new visitors and compell them to keep reading, press on.
The problem with slow-loading blogs is that very few people know why they are slow loading.
Fortunately for you, the Kindom 2.0 is one…ehr, several….of those people. With no further ado, here are three reasons why your Christian blog is loading slowly, and how to fix it:
1) Image size. It’s not the size at which the image appears on your blog that matters, it’s the file size. So, clicking on the corner of your image and dragging it to the appropriate size in your browser does nothing to reduce the file size and improve the load time of your blog. You actually need to resize the photo with a program such as Irfanview.
2) Javascript. Running too many javascript applications on your blog is like pouring sugar in the gas tank of your Shelby Mustang. It just doesn’t make any sense. We’re talking about widgets, chiclets, and data gathering tools (stat counters) that are based on javascript here. The problem with javascript is that it instructs the browser to look on another server in order to gather information to be displayed on your page. Any time you make your display speed subject to a server that you can’t control, you’re jeopardizing the surfing experience of your readers.
It’s gets more hairy than a sasquatch on rogaine when you try to load multiple javascript applications at once. The solution is to kill the widgets, m’kay. Do you really need them to enhance the users experience? I think not. Lose the blogger bling for sake of the faster load time and make your readers happy.
3) Length of the Homepage. How many articles are you displaying on your home page? If your front page is longer than Gone with the Wind, you need to make some adjustments. Every platform is different, but somewhere under the “Options” or equivalent, it’s going to give you a choice for how many articles to display on the front page. I suggest using a number that is 10 or smaller, depending upon how long and drawn out your writing style is.
In addition, if you’re a well-trained blogging machine, you’ll already know about the “more” tag. Use it liberally to reinfoce fast load times (although I could do with adhering to my own advice on this one).
Now, I fully admit that I shamelessly stole 90% of this information from my good buddies over at the Real Estate Tomato. Why? Because I got a question in my inbox to this effect, and it was easier to rephrase what they had already written than to engage my brain housing group into thinking of another (probably inferior) answer. Plus, I already know they won’t sue me.
We Build Blogs
I’m in a really weird mood. I just had a vision of a sasquatch on rogaine. Nasty!