Transitioning to a Cleaner, Faster Loading Site
A popular statistic shows that people don’t want to wait more than a few seconds until your site loads. There are only a dozen or so widgets and plugins on your blog, some so useless that you don’t even know what they are supposed to “do.” Cleaning up and optimizing your site can be one of the most beneficial cleanups that you perform on your blog.
It’s a sad time in your blog’s lifespan. It took quite some time to accumulate all those advertisements, links, widgets that tell the time and temperature, and now your blog takes more than a significant amount of time to load.
The question now arises – How do I eliminate the clutter and optimize my website to create a faster loading page?
While the answer may seem rather simple, there is a process that I use that helps me save time in the long-term, which can benefit you when you need to reorganize content or add additional elements to the site. This post isn’t necessarily meant to criticize the amount of widgets that are used on blogs, but instead serve as a guide to “upgrading” your entire theme to a new version.
The Process
- First, you’ll want to make a backup of all the files associated with your template, including plugins, add-ons, widgets, etc. Even if you aren’t going to use the particular widgets again when you launch your redesigned front-end, make sure that everything is backed up simply as a precaution. I like to use either Google Notebook or a basic text editing program for temporary backups. You don’t want to skip a file, or you could risk “breaking” your entire website. If you self-host your blog, you can use an FTP application to download the complete file, otherwise copy/paste all the necessary code.
- Next, choose the template that you are preparing to use on your blog. If possible, test the template on a test server/separate blog to make sure that it is compatible without any missing code. It would be a complete disaster if the template wouldn’t work when you were in the process of overwriting every other file (this is why it is essential to create backups). On the other hand, if you are simply cleaning up your blog, you can skip this step.
- Eliminate all unnecessary code that was previously in place. Take out widgets, plugins, and related content that has piled up since you started the blog. During the process, be sure that all tags are closed, or you’ll be scrambling to get the code fixed once you reach the next steps. If at all possible, rearrange the elements in the code as they would appear on your blog.
- Place related content together in the sidebar, including links, images, and script-based widgets, with longer-loading widgets appearing closer to the top of the page.
- Eliminate “white space” in the template file, as this adds time to the page loading.
- Don’t be afraid to eliminate widgets that serve little to no purpose. In my opinion, you don’t need a clock, weather widget, and fifty directory/rating buttons unless you are able to present them in a manner that appeals to readers.
- Don’t add graphics that add a whole splash of color, it distracts readers from the content. Instead, stick with colors that are solid and basic – blacks, blues, whites, reds, greens, etc. and base your entire theme off of a combination of two to three of those colors.
- Maintain enough content in the sidebars or visitors will wonder whether you have anything to present. You’ll want to keep the essential links to your archives, main pages, and other relevant widgets. - It is now time to re-upload all the content that had been copied. Scan through the entire blog to further eliminate errors and widgets that have been deemed unnecessary.
- You will immediately have a site that should load faster than before.
