Ways to Optimize Your Blog
I realized that sometimes my blog was slow to load and at first I really didn’t bother about it but as it started to get slower with my YouTube videos and image headings on blog posts, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I did a website speed test from WebsiteOptimization.com only to realize that my blog takes about 76 seconds on 56k to load up and around 8.6 seconds on T1 to load up. I decided to do a little optimization and here is what I did:
Convert JPG’s to GIF
Most of the JPG’s on the main page of my website were in the range of 40KB such as the Mp3 Player Giveaway image, Jay’s sponsorship image and the two Technorati buttons. I decided to open up Photoshop and convert all the images from JPG into GIF and sure enough, a 60% reduction in sizes of the images took place which would help my bandwidth and user load time significantly.
Removing Unnecessary Ads
There were some referrals and ad buttons on the blog that weren’t doing much and were hogging up loading time and the best way to increase the speed was to get rid of them. Sometimes, as bloggers we like to experiment with new ad systems and if they don’t work then we decide to stop using them and forget removing their script or image from the blog. For example, my Agloco referral button was on my blog for 45 days and since then nobody had signed up and all that means is that I could use that space and load time for something else that would help my blog.
Checking Unused Scripts
There is a tool available for Firefox users called “Firebug” and Firebug gives you access to several development tools at your fingertips. For example, you can see your HTML broken down by div id tags, your CSS and the Javascript codes running on your page. Also they have a “Net” feature that lets you see how many items your blog requests from its sources such as images, etc and the appropriate load time for each. This allows you to see which takes the longest load time and remove it if you don’t find it useful. You can see a screenshot of Firebug’s Net tool in action.
Speed Test Comparison Results
I also did several other tests to see how other blogs rank when compared to my blog after the test. I compared my results to JohnChow, ProBlogger, Guy Kawasaki and ShoeMoney. Here are the results:
What was surprising was that even though my blog fared well when compared to the others, all of their results fell into the same area. Aside from myself and Problogger, at the DSL/T1 speeds, JohnChow, Guy Kawasaki and ShoeMoney all fell into the 14 second range. Seeing the results, consider how much time it takes to load up your blog or website by going here. Does your blog take more than 14 seconds or less?
Thanks for the ideas and tool links. I am curious what is the percentage of internet users that have DSL or T1 speeds? I know broadband is growing, but what percentage of surfers have to wait a minute to 2 minutes to read on of the blogs you mentioned because they are on dial up.
Hey Tyson, In the US 80% of the users use DSL or higher and a mere 20% use 56k or less. But this is only true of the US where DSL is a quite affordable. In most other countries, the number of users using 128k or less is higher than those using DSL.
Here’s my current results:
Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K 67.79 seconds
28.8K 35.50 seconds
33.6K 30.88 seconds
56K 19.81 seconds
ISDN 128K 8.29 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 3.64 seconds
Beat that Enkay!
This is a neat little tool, and I will have to remember it and see what happens after my upgrade tomorrow and then again after I monetize my blog.
Thats really quick! Excellent results Nick! I would figure that people don’t mind waiting upto 15 seconds at the T1 connection because thats fairly quick but I would think anyone that has a blog that rates at 20 seconds or higher at the T1 level is running a bit slow.
Also always use the “Save for the web†feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer. Online image optimizer can be found here
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/
cheers
Thats absolutely correct. Using the “Save for Web” feature makes a big difference! Thanks for the reminder! Images are definitely the ones putting more stress in terms of load times. I haven’t seen that image optimizer before so I will surely check it out! Thank you!
This is something I keep meaning to do, so thanks for the reminder! I’d planned on converting all the graphics to PNG. Supposedly that gives a modest decrease in size over GIF.
No problem at all. I have realized that PNG is a little more clear than GIF too.
Bad – bad – my results are bad.
Connection Rate Download Time
14.4K 258.55 seconds
28.8K 133.58 seconds
33.6K 115.72 seconds
56K 72.87 seconds
ISDN 128K 28.28 seconds
T1 1.44Mbps 10.31 seconds