Jake’s Life

These few tricks don’t take much time off of your site’s total loading time, and they don’t take much time to start using either. Many people who surf the web with high-speed connections and fast computers won’t notice much of a difference, but if you’re anything like me and load ten pages at a time in different Firefox tabs or check your favorite blogs from your mobile device it can make a big difference.

Check your loading times

Go to Self SEO and check how fast your site loads. This should be both your first and your last steps in giving your blog a check up or after applying a new template or design.

Add a slash

When linking to other sites (or even putting your link somewhere like a comment field) add a slash to the end of it. For example, type http://www.jakeslife.net/ instead of just http://www.jakeslife.net. When you don’t add the slash the web server has to figure out which directory to dump you in, but when you do you get that extra second.

Optimize your images

I’m definitely bad about this. Often in Windows Live Writer I add the image and set the size, but do very little beyond that. Unless you’re showing off photography or some high-res imaging go into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor, I use Paint.net) and scale it down. Web Resizer is a free online service that allows you to optimize images for your blog to reduce size and increase loading times.

Check dead links

Dead-Links.com asks for your web site’s URL and shows you all of the links which are now dead, both on your own server space and external links. While it doesn’t do much for loading time it sure as hell helps with frustration in the long run.

Check other browsers

Using BrowserShots.org (site seems to be down right now, but there are similar services available) you can check to see how your site looks in other browsers. Sure it’s great if you use a tricked out Windows XP Pro box with Firefox after you’ve modified it for your needs, but what about the new users who just bought a notebook and are still stuck with IE? How about those who check your posts on vacation from their parents’ old first generation iMac? How will it look to them?

Make a mobile version

If not for me, then for everyone else out there who gets bored at work, the bus stop, Starbucks, stuck in traffic, or waiting at the doctor’s office for their appointment. Most blogging engines have a plugin (or their own extension naming) to help render your blog on mobile devices, whether it is a Java based browser on a standard cell phone or a Smartphone or Pocket PC running Pocket Internet Explorer or Opera Mobile. Go a step further and make sure that they can add comments from their device. Their hits and comments only help you in the long run. If you use Wordpress check out WP-PDA.

What other ways do you give your blog a check up?