Comments on: What To Do if Your Blog is Slow

By: Most Tweeted Articles by Blogging Experts

Most Tweeted Articles by Blogging Experts — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:06:28 +0000

[...] into 2010 with tight budgets that demand measurable results. Here are… 2 Likes What To Do if Your Blog is Slow – Tips For Speeding Up Your Load Time | Erica Says People ask constantly, why is my blog slow? Losing readers to a long load time is usually [...]

By: EricaMueller

EricaMueller — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:35:49 +0000

Robert,

You should have been one of the contributors for this post!

Thanks for all the helpful information!

By: EricaMueller

EricaMueller — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:34:46 +0000

I like that! Let's un-plug the unused plugins and those that cause strife!

By: Graham Tappenden

Graham Tappenden — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:24:36 +0000

Hi Maria – I just checked your blogs to make sure, and you only have the plug-ins activated that you actually use.

By: Robert Bravery

Robert Bravery — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:51:14 +0000

Good post,

I would also suggest too many and too big media files. Like pictures, music, video, etc. Check your theme design that it does not carry too many big graphic file sizes rlevant to the actual size of the graphic.

External HTTP requests is also a killer. You call it external referencing. But really it is all types of external http requests. These are requests via HTML or Java or some other script to external websites. Here you are at the mercy of the external webserrver and website. Which you have no control over. Allso the extra requests cause extra and time consuming hops over the network to retrieve the data. Lower these HTTP requests if you can.

Slow Database: Well this is a real conundrum. Many databases and thousands of tables can slow a website down. But it's not the datbase alone, but a combination of software, hardware and setup. 1000 databases and tables can run faster than 10 if hosted on a good machine and setup correctly. It also depends of the type and traffic of the sites being hosted. You can get good perormance out of many websites that have low traffic as opposed to fewer websites with huge amounts of traffic.

But Yes your point that shared database hosting can be a killer.

Also rearranging your code can give you the effect of a spedier site. Like putting requests into an iframe, putting such requests at the bottom of the site and dom model. Causeing these scripts to run last, gives the impression taht your site loads faster. Because people will start reading your site when it's finnished loading, unaware that at the end you site is still making external requests.

By: Maria Shipley

Maria Shipley — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:13:49 +0000

I guess some of the plugins need to get unplugged.
Thanks for sharing!

By: Mike CJ

Mike CJ — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:45:50 +0000

Agree with both of you – I couldn't get over the difference when we switched from shared to a private server. It's expensive, but fabulous. Even at the height of the Beyond Blogging craziness the server just kept going.

By: EricaMueller

EricaMueller — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:42:42 +0000

Mike, IE is of the devil. Especially IE6. I use Firefox, but I make sure I test in IE too, cause it doesn't process a site them same. Microsoft, go away!!!

Marko, we use Rackspace for hosting and we LOVE it. You're right, you get what you pay for. I have a hard time recommending anything else to my clients because I know how overloaded a lot of hosts are. I've been pretty satisfied with BlueHost, but have had problems with everyone else I've worked with.

By: Marko

Marko — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:37:31 +0000

Good piece of advice. Regarding slow databases – every serious blog should get decent hosting. You know what they say: You get what you pay for.

EDIT: oops, didn't really mean to reply to Mike with this comment, pressed wrong button.
By the way, good idea Mike

By: EricaMueller

EricaMueller — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:35:49 +0000

Robert,

You should have been one of the contributors for this post!

Thanks for all the helpful information!