Tuesday 2 June 2009

New poll: Flying Trilobite load times

Does this blog take too much time to load?

I've worried about this since its inception, and tried loading it on multiple computers. Usually I'm okay with it, but then again I'm the author.

Have your say in my sidebar poll, or in the comments below!

Currently I have it set-up to show the last 10 posts. I've been considering jettisoning more of my sidebar gadgets & widgets as well. (Tag cloud? Does anyone even look at those any more?) Typically I also try to save my images at a resolution that maintains a compromise between image quality and load times.

Anyway I'm curious, and the poll is anonymous. Thanks!


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11 comments:

m said...

I first opened the link to this post on my phone from your Twitter feed and, yes, it did load slowly, but so does everything on my phone. I'd say there isn't a problem when viewed on a computer though, at least the wait doesn't bother me. As for all the sidebar stuff, the more the merrier!

Bob O'Hara said...

Which option is the Pharyngulite trap? come on, it's not a proper online poll until PZ crashes it.

Glendon Mellow said...

Interesting, Mo; a friend once said to me, "only other bloggers read blogs". Perhaps as a blogger yourself, the load times seem normal? If that's true, then do I care about load times?

It's only been a day, but the poll is interesting. Currently at 1 Yes, 6 Nah, 5 Never noticed. I wonder how much it is affected by non-bloggy folks on my Facebook not waiting for it to load to chime in!

Sorry Bob! I should have included "6 000 years old" as an option. *grin*

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you show concern for the readers, dude! Form my experience that's really important when running a blog. Otherwise, you might stick to the old-fashioned and private diary and journal.

Dicing with Dragons said...

Your site is slow to load. To put it beyond the realm of subjectivity, I used this: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

For comparison, I also did my own site, and found I fared far better for load times.

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Raptor!

Thanks ScottE!

I'll check it out now. I usually use the "save for web" feature in Photoshop to help with the images, but I haven't really done much else other than try to refresh my widgets and cut out the useless ones.

I'm also considering putting all my regularly visited links in a post ( I did this once before) and the others in a Google Reader for me to visit.

I'll take a look at the other recommendations.

Thanks, Scott!

Unknown said...

I voted for Nah, it's good. I'm on shitty satellite shared with hundreds of other soldiers. I almost never get downloads faster than 100k, and I'm satisfied with your load times. Sometimes it takes a little bit to load, but typically the text is loaded pretty fast. I am used to starting to read the text before all the images have loaded. The gadgets on the sidebar seem to load last, which is good. If you need the gadgets it's convenient to have them there, but I don't think they are the first thing that you would do on your blog, so they would be loaded by the time you would need them.

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks Eric! Your perspective is pretty valuable. Hmm. Perhaps I should try and move some widgets like bloggy awards to their own page or something.

Only 20 votes, but it looks clear most people are somewhat satisfied.

Glendon Mellow said...

As an interesting note, I ran my website and Pharyngula both through the website optimization ScottE has suggested earlier in this thread: Pharyngula is pretty widget heavy, but also notoriously popular.

The result? Pharyngula is still almost twice as fast as my blog. So using that as a benchmark, I'm going to keep working on lowering my load times.

KenKzak said...

Thank you for asking.
Your header art was by far the slowest part. I read at least 3 posts before it was done loading.
your site is not as bad as some. A particular favorite blog, overloads me till lockup about 1/3 of the time.

I'm on dialup with a now ancient PC. WIN98. IMO-Too many people [if programmers are still considered people] engage in PC elitism. They have a fast computer and assume everyone else should have one too.

You've probably seen this, but just to be sure. Winged Trilobite pins and others.
http://studiofoglio.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SF&Product_Code=STF126&Category_Code=Girl_Genius

Glendon Mellow said...

Thanks, KenKzak!

(If you are reading this...) Interesting; I did let the blog banner go in higher than my previous two banners. Perhaps I can tweak that a bit more.

I try not to be too elitist; after all I'm a ten year old Compaq laptop missing a bunch of pixels in the top right corner. I'll make some changes over the next few weeks.

Yes, I have seen the Foglio's work! Fantastic. A blogger brought it to my attention shortly after I launched a couple of years ago. I've been painting winged trilobites a long time, and it turned out so had they in the Girl Genius comics. I emailed the Foglios, apologized for possibly stepping on their territory (they are much more well-known than I am.

They liked my work, understood it was a case of convergent artistic evolution, and were cool. Now they maintain a link here.

Thanks for the comment and (presumably) voting in the poll!

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Posts over 14 days old have their comments held in moderation - I've been getting an unusual amount of spam for a guy who paints trilobites. I'll release it lickety-split though.

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