wayne on August 16, 2008
I recently installed the Technorati reaction count to WayneJohn.com and realize now that it simply slowed my homepage.
Readers current with my blog will remember a post I wrote last week about adding a Technorati link count widget to your blogger.com blog. When I wrote that I also added the widget on here as well. After I did so, I reloaded my homepage and it crawled during loading. I thought this was a temporary thing with the new Technorati widget, but it hasn't gone away. The page had continued to load slowly.
Why did it do this? You'll notice that my homepage is a listing of the past 10 posts, and each one would have to reach out to Technorati to get each posts "reaction" count. 10 hits out to another server, one for each post displayed on my homepage. I could better use the time to load something else than continually display 'no reactions'. I haven't tapped Technorati that well yet, so I might as well save you the time when loading my homepage.
I decided to only show the Technorati reactions when viewing the post. I felt that was good enough.
You might also notice that I'm changing some of the text found around the blog. I'm trying to find that right message that I want to give first time visitors.
This is a simple example of how I might look at a site to make a small change and get some dramatic improvement. The ultimate goal is to have it snap to in appearance, right? I think these small changes will help towards that end.
How about your site? Does it snap or creep open? Have you taken a look at Technorati and done anything to your blog?
