Once your blog is set up, the last thing you want is to lose interested readers because the page takes too long to load.
Make sure that your hard work and effort gets the best pay off possible by making sure your site moves as quickly as the people viewing it. Here are some tips to keep up the pace.
1. Test Your Blog’s Performance
There are add on programs, such as Page Speed, that will test how quickly your blog loads. Firefox and WordPress have plugins that will reduce load time, and some offer helpful tips to increase speed.
2. Optimize Your CSS Code
Think of CSS code as a programming package for web sites. CSS offers different choices for editing and design, just as each new version of Windows offers varying options . CSS optimizers are available online, and you can try out different ones . Look for a program that minimizes the amount of code while providing the design aspects (like font size and coloring) that you prefer. The less code, the faster your blog will run.
3. Remove Blog Clutter
Remember that every picture, string of text, or button on your blog has its own code and eats up space on your server. Are there some ads on your page that no one clicks on? A donate or buy button that is not in use? Perhaps some links to other pages that are outdated and no longer work? Getting rid of these excess bits will make your blog faster, more efficient, and easier on the eye.
4. Consider Moving Away from Shared Hosting
If your blog shares hosting on a server with other web pages, your site may become hard to access during high traffic times. The main time you want to get attention, your readers may end up clicking elsewhere! Dedicated or gridline hosting will take your reader directly to your blog, with less chance of traffic issues.
5. Clean Up Your Plugins
Plugins are nifty little programs that drive traffic to your site. They interface with social media, iPhone apps, or widgets. Do a little research to find out which ones work best for your site, and remove anything that isn’t generating traffic for you. If your blog is on WordPress, you’ll often get alerts sent to your email whenever a new plugin is created or becomes popular.
Be conservative in your use of pictures, buttons and programs. Check your web pages speed, links, and learn how to make code and hosting work to your advantage. Once you have done this, your blog will have the best possible speed, and a better chance of reaching your readers.
Image Credit: Rosen Georgiev
 | Guest Post by Lori T. Lori T. is a writer and blogger with a passion for internet marketing and webmaster tools. She also enjoys writing about healthcare careers and is a regular contributor at About Medical Billing and Coding. |
About Guest Blogger
Excellent post Lori, removing waste plugins and images from our servers and reducing the size of images may also work.
Hey Naser, thank you for stopping by and dropping a comment here. Any excess baggage that you throw away can let you run at max. It’s like crafting your blog to be aerodynamic.
even reducing the usage of Jave Script as well as utilizing few jet packs will help us to improve our loading time.
Great write up.
Hey Siddartha. Thank you for stopping by. As I mentioned before, reducing excess baggage can definitely help you run faster. I'm just not sure what jet packs are and the terminology is quite new to me. But I am dead sure about minimizing your Javascripts.
Reducing access on database is also a good way to speed up a blog (through cached versions) as well as employing Gzip. Great tips by the way
It's great to see you here Jason. Reducing access on a database to optimize performance is definitely the way to go specially for those blogs that have shopping carts with tons of product catalogues.
This is a concern when you move into a personal domain
thanks for the post and will keep the tips in mind too.
Recently I got a comment from one of my readers that she is getting jquerry error while loading the site. I checked at my end and it was all fine. Can this be because of slow internet speed. any thoughts
Hey Prasant, it's nice to have you here. Welcome!
About your question, basically it can be factored into different things. One it can be a bandwidth problem with your domain host. They may be doing maintenance at that time or you need to increase your bandwidth plan (I'm envious). It can also be a browser issue with your reader's security settings. Slow broadband connection can also be attributed with this problem especially if you have lots of widgets inside that takes time to load up. For slow connections this will result in time outs.
Hope these help and talk soon.
Thank you for visiting Meek Watcher Daniel. You know what? It was a dream of mine to be able to work with a 3D animation company. I do have a bit of talent in sketching when I was young but somehow I landed on an ERP consulting job. Bummer!
Anyway, over to your question. I heard about CDN and there are companies specializing in these services so it should be beneficial. Big companies like Automattic (makers of WordPress) are spending a lot to use CDN for commercial purposes.
If blogs are mostly multimedia, like video-streaming blogs, they will definitely be enjoying speedy page loads using CDN that improves user browsing experience.
Hi Lori, thanks for this useful post. Somewhere i have read about the Content Delivery Networks to speed up your blogs. Are they helpful?
You are most welcome Timo. I hope to see you here again soon.
I have a post featured here discussing 6 Reasons Why You Should Throw Your Blog Design in a Box. In a nutshell, I emphasize on simplicity. Check it out and thank you for stopping by.
Very good point. Cache plugins can be very helpful as well and there are certainly quite a few to choose from. Maybe that's something I'll cover in another article sometime
I think limiting all the extras, features, widgets, and things on a site or page. Some of these things may look nice, but do people really use them that much or need them. I'm not saying get rid of them all, but if you really don't need them or they aren't that helpful maybe get rid of a couple. Adding all that extra code, and often external code to another site to make the thing work can add up and slow things down.
Lori and Ramcel,
Thank you for your answers
Timo
I am not 100% sure of the logistics in terms of images but I would tend to think that using an absolute reference and hosting the image on your own site would be faster. Also, you don't have to worry about a third party site going down and making your posts look awful when the images don't load.
Thank you for dropping that question here Timo.
It has been an academic debate long before on whether or not to use absolute or relative paths for image URLs. When it comes to speed, page loading can only be seen affecting a site way back when people are still using 56K modems. But in these times of mega and gigabit per second broadband speed, issues relating to absolute and relative URLs are of little concern because it makes it seem like lightweight in server loading. Those that can visibly affect loading are those programs that do processing like widgets or plugins especially if they are placed excessively on a website.
I think it is more of a best practice rather than speed concern that can spur discussions on whether to use absolute or relative URLs. For example for corporate infrastructures, it will be a problem for web developers if they use absolute URLs and then the company decided later on to run their network through Secure Socket Layers. This change from http:// to https:// will be an issue since there will be extra http calls to request the URL mapping. Though the images may appear, users will be thrown messages that a certain page is mixed between secure and non-secure items.
I hope you find this information useful. Talk soon.
Thank you for stopping by Salman.
It's nice for you to mention about the cache plugins. This blog may not be running on WordPress but if ever I will be running one in the future, your idea will be useful for me.
Great tips to speed up wordpress … I'd also like to mention, use of cache plugins which will add up in making the blog run faster
Lori,
Something that I have been wondering and if it causes to slow down my blog loading times is this:
Is there a difference between a relative and absolute linking of the images on my blog when it comes to page loading speed?
If I remember correctly, that when embedding images the relative way (img src="…/images/image.jpg"), they would be loading faster than referring them by using a absolute reference (img src="http://www.mydomain.com/images/image.jpg"
.
At least in the latter option, you browser has to fetch the images over HTTP (and probably do that many times when your page is loading).
Just wondering .. does it make a difference in page loading speeds?
Timo
It well organized with good article and great view by giving the best information needed
for everyone requirement.Thanks for the tips…
You are most welcome. I'm glad you find this post useful.
that helps bro
thanks for the info. Glad i have asked my question to the best man 
Anytime man and don't mention it because you are always welcome. Cheers!
If you're running a WordPress site, then you must minimize the number of plug-ins that you're using. Hosting on a reliable web hosting provider can also help your blog run faster.
Shared Hosting
Twitter: themeekwatcher
says:
Yes, Siree! If you are well aware of minimizing the use of WordPress plugins and only activate those that you really need, your blog’s loading speed will improve dramatically.
Choosing a reliable web host provider is a must. No matter how you optimize your blog if your web host provider frequently fails, not only are you not able to load your site but you are loosing traffic and readership as well.
Thank you for the nice feedback Marshal.
Ramcel Gatchalian recently posted… Should You Really Care to Write for Just One Reader
Unclog and rinse. Make it a habit to compress your scripts and codes to make your site load faster. Always put the scripts at the bottom of the page and limit the use of plug-ins when you’re using WordPress.
Twitter: themeekwatcher
says:
There are only a handful of plugins for WordPress that I currently use and I remove those that doesn’t really provide value to my blog on a funcational perspective.
So yeah, you are right to limit the use of plugins.
Thank you for your input Mischa.
Ramcel Gatchalian recently posted… Are Your CommentLuv Backlinks Being Stolen by Google?
I find using plugins that come in packages very helpful. Not only do I still get the benefits of having the plugins that I need, it also loads up faster than it used to when I had a bunch of it installed. Also another thing that I found out that can highly affect our site’s speed, are images. We have to moderate the amount of images that we ask our sites to load up because they are the main culprits to slow site loading. Thanks for the tips! Appreciated.
Twitter: themeekwatcher
says:
You got that right. A perfect example of a multiple-plugin-package would be the popular CommentLuv Premium by Andy Bailey. He was able to successfully roll 7 critical plugins into one super plugin. Having only one plugin instead of seven definitely improves the overall loading performance of the blog.
Ramcel Gatchalian recently posted… 3 Ways to Stay Interested in Your Blog
I agree that too many images, videos and plugins can reduce the download speed of the blog and therefore these should be optimized. Well said.
Twitter: themeekwatcher
says:
Thank you for your visit and comment Lalit.
Optimization is the key to fast-loading blog pages.
Ramcel Gatchalian recently posted… 3 Ways to Stay Interested in Your Blog
Great job but I think the leopard would be a better sketch to present the feature
! I appreciate your cooperative effort. Hope it’ll really work and make the blog faster. Thanks for your kind assist.
Think about it, if what bloggers are hungry for is feedback, and also you’re feeding them with something more substantial than “great submit” you’re giving them precisely what they want.
If your blog takes a long time to load, many readers may leave your blog before they have the chance to read it. Just try to avoid flash templates like a plague in your blogs, some flash templates gives out some weird loading screen which will not only drive your visitors away but also reduces the loading speed of your site to a large extent. Decrease the size of your images or use thumbnails that link to the full-size image. Limit the posts that are shown on your home page. Never show the full posts on the home page, because this will make your site very slow to load.
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