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Blogger Basics

Critiqued by Cowboytf | September 25, 2007 .

After 7mths of blogging, I have learned a great deal and thought it would be a good time to share some of my new-found knowledge in the blogging world. 

Accelerate Your Blog/Website

  • Reduce the number of graphics:

A large amount of graphics of your web page can slow your blog down tremendously.  If you are lucky enough to receive various blogger awards, try displaying them all on a page of their own with a link to them from your main page.  Also, try to keep your pictures under 10k. Always make sure to include the height and width dimensions of your graphics in your HTML code.
This means that every IMG tag should have the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes specified.  If web browsers don’t have to figure out the dimensions of your graphics, they can already display placeholders and start displaying the text of your web page before loading the graphics from the server.

  • Picture hosting:

Using third party picture hosting can also slow your site down a great deal.  If at all possible, get your pictures hosted by the same company that hosts your blog.

  • Page size:

Limit your total page size, including images, to under 36k. 

Fact: Faster page loading is essential to being successful online.  You will lose readers instantly if  it takes them 2 minutes to load your page everytime.

Creating Trust

  • Clean, professional site/pages

Using blinking & colorful text or flashy banners just make your site look tacky.  Of course, you want your blog to have it’s own personality but you also want to convert your traffic into buyers. 

  • Create an About and Contact Me page

Let your readers know who you are.  Let them see that you are a real person and not some automated website.  Setup a contact form or provide an email for all questions or concerns about your blog.

  • Offer Freebies

Everybody loves freebies!!  You can find a million freebies for any niche, you just have to do a little research. 

  • Testimonials Page

I love this idea.  When you get really nice comments or feedback, setup a page specifically for displaying these remarks. Let your readers know what others are saying about you.  It’s a great way to gain trust with your readers and potential customers.

Trust and fast loading blogs are very basic but can make a big difference on whether you have 12 readers or 120 readers.

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4 Comments so far
  1. jenny-up the hill  September 26, 2007 4:46 am

    These are some really great suggestions. I really, really need to be about getting my “about me” section written. And I really need to stop using third party pictures hosting…I didn’t realize it slowed things down…makes sense though!

    btw…I came here via Laura’s Musings.

  2. Zhu  September 26, 2007 10:31 am

    How very true !

    I had never really thought about graphic etc. for my page load but I’ll consider it. Designing your own website is tricky, isn’t it !

    Very true also about the content… you did learn a lot !

  3. Cowboytf  September 26, 2007 4:39 pm

    The graphics can made one of the biggest differences. Designing is soooo hard for me. I basically suck at it:(

  4. Web Developer Binh Nguyen  January 20, 2008 12:10 pm

    Hi there, it’s my first time here and I would like to contribute some opinion on your post. Please take it easy on me.
    1. Agree, the less graphic the better. Less header request, less latency.

    2. Hosting your images on the same company that host your website doesn’t help because it require DNS translation and external header requests anyway.

    Even on subdomain won’t help much. Host on the same domain help. So try to get some hosting that give you big storage and bandwidth.

    3. Page size, the less the better. I notice this blog have CommentLuv so please visit the link it found because that’s what I just want to talk about, how to check your page size. Don’t trust the text, check all the graphic elements and external objects such as video, flash and javascript.

    Thanks for the rest of the tips. I would need to consider all those points and evaluate my blog and adjust accordingly.

    Cheers,
    Binh

    Web Developer Binh Nguyen’s last blog post..How to Know Your Web Page is Overweight