Had a commenter or two mention the blog seems to load a bit slowly. I’ve noticed on both Mac Safari and Windows Firefox, the main body of the blog loads normally, but there appears to be something in the sidebar causing a traffic jam. I suspect it could be that scrolling blogroll, but I’m not sure. Can’t be the Paypal button; that’s very simple code and I’ve never known a Paypal button to slow down any other page they’re on.
Anyone else experiencing this?
Just sat here counting in my head, and by golly, the blog took a full 17 seconds before it fully loaded (that is to say, it was 17 seconds before the cursor stopped being an hourglass and I had full mouse control over the page). In Internet terms, 17 seconds is a small eternity. Hmm, what to do? Kazim?
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AmberKatt
December 27, 2008 at 10:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Oh heck yeah. The blog has been loading super-slowly for me ever since the Digg links appeared in it. (Whether that’s the cause, or just a coincidence, I don’t know….)It reloads just as slow every time I navigate away from and back to the home page, as well.
Martin
December 27, 2008 at 10:28 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I’ve been thinking the Digg buttons may be the culprit, too.
bpabbott
December 27, 2008 at 11:02 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The blog loaded for me so quickly I’m wondering what is slowing down other pages.Did you change something (i’m on a Mac using Safari).
Curt Cameron
December 27, 2008 at 11:20 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It loaded in about two seconds for me, using Firefox with NoScript and all Javascripts for this site are not allowed except for blogger.com. I’ve disabled scripts for digg, blogspot, technorati, google-analytics, etc, all of which are wanting to run Javascripts.
crucifinch
December 27, 2008 at 11:25 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I can’t be sure what is causing it, but the slowness seems to be a relatively new thing for me, within the last few months.Maybe God is on to you?
Zurahn
December 27, 2008 at 11:35 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It loads pretty well for me, but ignoring that…According to Firebug your bottleneck is from the PayPal buttons, Digg button, and Urchin JS file (unavoidable).The scrolling blogroll (from rpc.blogrolling.com) is the largest by a good margin at 129KB, but at least for me loaded quite quickly — inseparable from the much smaller files. For decent connections, that’s not what’s slowing the page.
Robert
December 27, 2008 at 11:49 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I use firefox, and timewarner cable internet, and have never had a problem loading the blog, if that helps you any. It might just be because I am sooooo awesome though.
Zurahn
December 27, 2008 at 11:55 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Having taken another look over the page, while I still can’t tell you exactly what would slow it to a crawl given it’s loading well for me, in terms of the sidebar loading more slowly, that’s a given. The main blogs are basically just text and is going to render immediately.The sidebar has substantially more content. The main issue is that you’ve got stuff from several different domains. RichardDawkins.net, Paypal.com, blogrolling.com, outcampaign.com. In terms of the page fully finishing loading, if any one of those domains is running slow, it slows down the load here as well.Blogger, I’m sure, gives you some space for image uploads. I’d suggest reuploading the images from those other sites so they’re all loading straight from Google.
Zurahn
December 28, 2008 at 12:11 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
OK, last comment I promise (for now anyway
)I’m pretty sure the culprit is the Blog Following box at the bottom. It’s all loaded in via JavaScript, and likes to takes its time.I just eliminate this little script that loads it…function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener(“load”, function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent(‘onload’, function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } }and presto, lightning speeds. If you can turn it off, I would greatly suggest it.
KyokuMA_JR
December 28, 2008 at 2:19 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Huh? It's perfectly fine for me & loads like any other page.
Gizmo
December 28, 2008 at 11:38 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Yeah not sure cause it loaded super fast for me in Chrome and Firefox, so maybe whatever it was has fixed itself.
Gizmo
December 28, 2008 at 11:44 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htmThat might show some reasons. I am having a hard time getting to a lot of websites today for some reason, looks like a few routers are down.
Martin
December 28, 2008 at 3:07 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Okay, today I’m on a MacBook and the blog loaded in about three seconds.Guess it depends on where you are, your system, routing issues, whatever.Does anyone actually use that scrolling blogroll? I mean, we could just dump it.
Thomas
December 29, 2008 at 11:29 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
@ZurhanIt looks like the problem isn't exactly the setAttributeOnload function, as all that does is change values. Many of the page's tags contain a default src attribute that this function changes once the page has finished rendering. If this function is slowing things down, it is likely because an image is loading slowly, and disabling the function removes the image.
cipher
December 30, 2008 at 7:18 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I find that while the sidebars are loading (which does take a while), the status bar in Firefox says, “Reading digg.com”. When I disable Javascript, it loads immediately.
AmberKatt
January 2, 2009 at 11:17 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Okay, counting in my head, it took about 1 minute and 57 seconds until the home page stopped loading and I had control over the mouse again. This computer has Explorer, and is connected to a T-1 line. It takes about this long every time I navigate to the home page, whether it’s from another webpage or whether it’s from an explanded-post page going-back-to-main page navigation.This is the only website I have this trouble with, and I bounce all over the web.