There are lots of things you can do to speed up a website. But that is a whole article in and of itself. For now, to make my blog more comfortable for my many new visitors, I removed some of my badges and third-party content on my sidebar. For now, this includes my Traineo badge that details how much weight I’m losing, my Amazon Wishlist, and my music listening profile on Last FM. They aren’t gone forever - you can still see them on my “About Lawrence” page.

Why did I choose those three? First, once you’ve been to my blog, there is little reason for you to see these on every single page. Most important though is that these three grab content from third-party websites to display on my sidebar. This content not only access a database live, but displays graphically, what is known as a “badge”. If those websites are not completely up to speed at the moment, the entire page on salberg.org could render much more slowly while waiting for that content to come in.

This website already has several hundred unique pages and each one of those pages could be slowed by a slowdown on a third-party site. As much as I love the trend toward badges and social inter-connectivity, it is more important that my website load speedily for new visitors who may not wait around to find out what is going around. With the increase of traffic I’ve been getting lately, it is the least I can do.

Lastly, despite all the hoopla surrounding Web 2.0, the “New Internet”, and social networking websites, there are already websites going under. Each one of those page requests by my website further places load on all these great free services. If there is a need, because someone is truly interested in knowing more about me, than fine. But for it to mindlessly load on each page seems likes a waste of these companies limited resources, and I’d like for them to stay free, so I’m doing my part here.

I left my del.icio.us tags on each page as these are updated more often, and del.icio.us is owned by Yahoo, a company hardly short of server space. I’m also temporarily leaving my 43 Folders info on until I fully decide where to put it. They may go shortly and I probably won’t post to announce their departure, but they’ll be on the above-mentioned “About Lawrence” page if they disappear.

Hopefully, I can inspire other bloggers and website developers to try doing the same to keep all these great services and websites running at full-capacity.

Technorati Tags: badges - blogging - website - web2.0 - internet

Posted in: Blogging & Website Design