Optimize your Blog Sidebars
ADVERTISEMENTSIn my previous post I mentioned about checking your blog for any issues and in that one of the factor was loading speed of the blog. One of the factors which may increase the load time of the blog are sidebars. We often add lots of stuff into the sidebars which often take time to load. Optimizing your sidebars can always reduce the load time. How to optimize your sidebar and what are required in the sidebar?
- Remove unnecessary information from your sidebar: Most of the themes come with Meta data information in the sidebar where you can find links like Login, XHTML Valid etc. These are not useful for your readers. You can also remove the Calender from the sidebar unless you feel that its very important for your blog.
- Remove monthly archives from the sidebar: A separate page can be created for archives where it can be viewed based on category or month.
- Remove unnecessary badges: Many of directories where you submit your blog requires to add the directory badge to your sidebar. These directories can only bring very little traffic to your blog and also these scripts may take time to load as well.
- Add popular posts section in your sidebar so that older posts which were popular will get attention.
- Do not add more than one blog community in the sidebar. It has been found that adding MyBlogLog readers to the sidebar can increase the load time. If you need to keep blog community, do not keep more than one. Further, restrict the number of readers to 5 or 10 so that the images will load faster.
- Remove recent comments from sidebar: Recent comments are not useful to the readers as it provides only a part of the comment with the comment author name. If you need to show some link love, you can add Top Commentators to the sidebar which will also increase the comments on your blog.
If you have any more suggestion or if you disagree to any of the points, please share your thoughts.
Share & Enjoy
Aug 31st, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Golden Tips Nirmal, I would like to add some points -
1) Show only 5 top commentator as it gives load on sidebar.php’s GET DATA function.
2) Use Small Image size and only 2 to 3 columns in a MyBlogLog widget for faster loading.
3) For affiliates, use self hosted images for faster load of image.
4) Remove special category posts listing from Sidebar.
5) Remove RECENT POSTS section also from the sidebar and the reader can see those articles on blog/homepage itself.
That were my adds … hope they are worth reading!
Aug 31st, 2007 at 7:13 pm
@Rishi,
Greats points made by you especially 1 and 3. But I couldnt get the 4th point mentioned, Special category listing?
Aug 31st, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Great tips there, I took the MyBlogLog widget from my blog since it took a lot of time to load.
I’m thinking of bringing a taller footer
to put the not so important stuff there.
Aug 31st, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Good Tips Nirmal !
Aug 31st, 2007 at 8:39 pm
@nirmal
yeah you should not have badges and more community stuffs. I took off all the communities except my blog log. So many times the community like blogcatalog , spicypage went down making the site too slow to load.
Do not agree on recent comments. Sometimes reader return back to see what the reader replied on his comments. So its kind of shortcut for him to reach the comments section.
@rishi again dont agree on recent posts as it gives new user the option to look at your latest posts without scrolling down the page. Also in single post .. he need not come back to the homepage to go to other page, but he can navigate it from side bar itself.
These are my personal opinion.
Aug 31st, 2007 at 8:47 pm
good tips buddy, definetely these changes will make the site to load faster. stumbled
Aug 31st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Top Commentators can be put on a separate page as well. I keep only internal links in the sidebar. The social widgets are okay if you put them them below the footer so that all the rest of the content loads first.
If you can do it with your theme, make sure the main content displays before the sidebars and put any JavaScript widgets either at the bottom of the right sidebar or in the footer.
Placement is everything.
Aug 31st, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I like having the monthly archives listed on every page. I think it gives authority. A list of how long I have been blogging. It give me some street credit, you know.
Other then that I like your post.
BeachBum
Aug 31st, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Great points Nirmal . Earlier i also used to paste the name of some blog directories but removed them as they were not effective .
Aug 31st, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Nice tips Nirmal, I have definitely made my sidebar look less cluttered and removed the mybloglog and technorati incoming links widgets. Further more to make the site look more attractive and present more information I am grouping related information into tabs so that user can easily navigate and the site looks less cluttered.
Sep 1st, 2007 at 12:24 am
Awesome tips! They are really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Sep 1st, 2007 at 11:08 am
@Kanak,
Nice explanation for having Recent comments and a strong point on having Recent posts.
@Ram,
Thanks for the Stumble.
@RT,
Placing all those widgets in Footer is a good option if the theme suits it, but Readers will have the tendency to leave the blog if the status bar is still in loading stage, I mean even if the content is loaded. That was a nice suggestion though.
Sep 1st, 2007 at 11:13 am
@BeachBum,
Thanks for the visit and your opinions.
@Madhur,
These directories are of no use, only thing is they get a back link from our blog.
@Keith,
Your new theme looks terrific, nice design and arrangement.
Sep 1st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Good Tips Nirmal
Sep 1st, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I’m currently finishing a few changes to my blog so these are all good points. Once I test a few more things it should be good to go. Thanks buddy.
Sep 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 am
Good tips, Side bar is crucial for the success of a blog.
Sep 3rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
good tips - i’m going to go look into that - so i can get my sidebars to load faster - i have found them loading awfully slow.
Sep 3rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I ve noticed more than 100 Xhtml errors commonly in WP blogs is there any way to reduce them …
even the good worpress theme ve errors..
Do you know any theme which is xhtml validation error free..
Sep 3rd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
@Shashank,
Its really difficult to fix the xhtml error, if you do some customization, then it will generate error. I have seen many themes which shows xHTML valid, may be you can search. If I find any new ones, I’ll let you know.
Sep 5th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Great to read these tips. looks like i’ve done everything as you suggested above except the last point.
Sep 7th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Doing all there truly gives blogs a professional look can scan my blog and tell me anything that i should do to get more attention.
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