Pingdom, the uptime service, recently published a report analyzing the load size of the Technorati Top 100 blogs. While the report isn’t focusing on individual blogs, it is still an interesting read.
The one thing that stands out is the massive size of the front pages of these blogs. The average size is a whopping 934 kB, and 35% had a front page larger than 1 MB. This effectively locks out dial-up users.
Why would you decide to do that?
The report’s conclusion is pretty spot on:
Since many blogs try to attract a large number of readers, they may be doing themselves a disservice if they let their blog size get too big, which will result in a slow-loading blog. Browser-side caching will help things a bit for frequent readers, but any new or casual visitor will have to load the page in its entirety and some may give up before it is finished or at least get frustrated.
They also conclude that broadband users would benefit from smaller front pages, which I wholeheartedly agree on. Even though I have a decent connection, I prefer pages that render quickly.
For comparison, the Blog Herald clocks in at 272,7 kB, which is pretty heavy too, but OK if you ask me. I never really optimized it for dial-up speed when I built it, but it is fast as an oiled lightning compared to the numbers in the report.
You should probably check your own blog, and see if it is dial-up friendly or not.
Author: Thord Daniel Hedengren
Thord Daniel Hedengren is a designer, writer, and blogger, and also the former editor of The Blog Herald. He used to be a hotshot in the gaming industry in Sweden, but sold everything and went International. Most recently he wrote a book called Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, and does loads of kickass design.
yeah some blogs take alot of time to load, kinda borning with all css and flash , but no one like simple sites any more..like that bloggersmosaic.com i just comment on , weird..just imagine spending 2 hours on dial up connection! with 2-4 k download rate
Who uses dial-up even today when broadband and DSL are widely available.
You would be surprised at how many people are still on dial-up. Think international. And think those who can’t get cable or DSL and have to use slow satellite connections or reliant upon slow WIFI access points – these are faster than dial-up but not much sometimes. I travel a lot and have a lot of trouble finding any high speed connections.