Friday, November 25, 2011

Prison Break and Blogger

Today it is the dogs' turn to provide a little humor to help digest all those scrumptious Thanksgiving meals many of you ate yesterday.  After all, laughter is good exercise. And what could be funnier today than watching a prison break?


If the video doesn't play, click here.

We have mentioned before about having a problem visiting and leaving comments because blogs load slowly - some more so than others.  Many bloggers and visitors lead a hectic life and have a limited amount of time to visit, so the easier it is to load your/our page, the more grateful we/they are. 

There are things we can all do to help Blogger blogs load faster  For one, we can clean up our sidebar. (Yes, we will be cleaning up ours again soon.)  With Blogger, we can have 10 pages on any subject.  We can make a page for the blog links we keep in our sidebar.  (We deleted our links when so many blogs were being locked over a link to a site that had been hacked.  Setting up a page for links is on our to-do list.)  This is a major loading holdup.  But if we make a page for our friends, all those links will only load when the friends page is clicked on.  We can make one for bridge friends or awards - or whatever subject fits our needs.  This helps the blog to load faster since you've cut down on the amount of links that must load on the main page.

The other day we posted on being careful because using some cute decorations found on the internet could get your blog hacked or hijacked.   Today The Real Blogger Status has a post on how adding holiday decorations can impact your visitors.

"Besides the long term and subtle computer hacking, your readers, visiting your blog decorated with the latest animation, will have a more immediate and obvious problem to consider - browser freezes and other computer overload problems." (Read the full post, Holiday Decorations & Your Blog, #2)

We clicked on a few blogs including our own with our homemade background and header and found loading any of them requires 100% of our CPU. Since there is no 101%-plus CPU, it's no wonder some blogs take FOREVER to load and let us scroll.

This post helped us understand why loading a blog uses 100% of our CPU ---

"The new templates feature the blog content housed in a transparent layer, so you can see the background beneath the content. As you scroll through the blog content, the background is displayed, in its glory. Your computer has to redraw the background, and the blog content, constantly, as you scroll. That takes computing power."  (Read the full post The New Designer Templates Have A Downside)

If you have music that loads too, we are less inclined to return.  You see, when it's quiet in here and music suddenly blasts, Jan screams and we all become very nervous.  The only place our speakers can sit is way behind our monitor so one of us has to get up and go alter the volume, then get up again when leaving the blog.  That isn't going to happen!  If we want to leave a comment, we get blasted out each time we click and the page changes. It makes us so nervous, we just want to get off that blog.   It can chase away other visitors too.

"Unexpected music can create both a bandwidth annoyance, and an audible distraction. People surfing blogs in a shared environment, for instance a library, won't appreciate any audio content in any blog.  

"If you want to decorate your blog with your favourite playlist, to complement the mood of the blog, that's OK - as long as you make the music optional." (Read the full article, Including Music in Your Blog.)

We're posting this for our own information too.  We want our visitors to have a pleasant experience and hope you would tell us if you have a problem on our site.

26 comments:

  1. Thank you for mentioning the music. We often stream other stuff in the background while we read blogs and then we miss what we were listening to.

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  2. Good information. We don't like music either unless it is our choice. We hope our blog opens quickly, we do try to keep it simple.

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  3. Thanks so much for all the ideas. If you get a chance will you stop by and let us know if we are still ok.

    Have a nice day
    Bert

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  4. Loved that video. How resourceful and clever!

    Thanks for that advice Jan. I have slow internet connection, so generally haven't got the patience for sites that take ages to load. I would also be grateful if you have problems getting on my blog? :))

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  5. LOL I see what I said up there!!! You know what I meant! Thanks for popping by the blog :)

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  6. Yay for the clever doggie!!

    This is what annoys me about owning a computer and being on the internet - it's like well why on earth can't people have lovely sparkly animations and decorations on their blog without negative consequences to the computer's system?

    Grrr! LOL!

    Take care
    x

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  7. We really don't like the music on blogs, either, unless it's optional. In truth, the mom does a lot of our commenting from the office, in between stuff, on breaks and on lunch, and she doesn't like having music start playing--it's disruptive.

    We do have a lot on our sidebars, but we also have a number of pages--links, friends, purr page, friends at the bridge, Annie and Chum's pages. We're going to add a page for the Christmas cards too, we think, rather than have everything in the sidebars.

    Good advice, thanks!

    P.S. The mom actually finds those animations hard on her aging eyes. And in fact things like that *can* cause people to have seizures--if they've got a pre-existing condition, of course. Probably pretty rare, but something that was discussed at work regarding Web accessibility.

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  8. Thanks for the info we are going to work on cleaning up our side bar the next rainy day. Today was a clean up the flowerbeds kinda day.

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  9. I had no idea he was going to escape through the ROOF! And all his buddies were watching and egging him on, too.

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  10. That was one very determined dog! Because of where we live we have a slow broadband connection so a lot of blogs load slowly for us. For some reason Wordpress seems to load a lot slower than Blogger. We hope you don't have trouble with our blog loading. We have no problems with yours.

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  11. We have deliberately kept our blog simple (ha as you know) because of loading problems. We have had problems with other blogs and like you we only will occasionally return. If it takes a few minutes to load a page and then a few minutes to load the comments it is frustrating. WE too try to make coming to our blog and leaving a comment easy. We also don't care for the music either, it is better for your reader to be able to listen if they want to. I know that can be done by using the settings. Thanks for all the information, it is very helpful.

    purrs
    >^,,^<
    ♥Abby♥Boo♥Ping♥Jinx♥Grace♥

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  12. Wwe hope we don't have a slow loading blog. Dog Dad thinks he kept it simple, and Dog Dad believes simple is almost always good.

    Essex & Sherman

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  13. Thanks for the information. We hope our blog still loads quickly with our new background. Mom Paula has tested it on several computers and it appears to be okay.

    Truffle and Brulee

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  14. Persistence and determination - works everytime!

    AROOOOOF!
    Boondocks & The Love Shack Pack

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  15. My human and I both hate it when blogs have music that starts up as soon as the page loads - she hates it because it usually isn't a song she likes, and I hate it because it startles me. A few blogs that we like, she will just turn off the sound before visiting - others she has opted to bypass altogether.

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  16. That video is heelairious!!! We love how his buddies are all staring at him through the door at the end--"Wow, did you see THAT Fritzie?" Ha ha ha

    Totally agree about music. I avoid sites that play it automatically. My blog is so pathetically simple which I hope lets it load quickly, but the truth is it's simple because the Human is so inept with making it any fancier!

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  17. I will probably keep mine plain for now, I am a dummy on this :))

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  18. Thank you for this post. Mom and I get real frustrated with blogs that take a long time to load, and neither of us like the unexpected music!

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  19. I loved that video and it sure was a great escape! Great info on blog loading times too, yep, it sure can be frustrating, especially the music!

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  20. Great information about cleaning up blogs ~ we did ours a while ago and it really helped. Thank you. xx

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  21. I don't like music either unless I turn it on myself. I try to keep my blog cleaned up. I hope mine isn't slow. I do know some people are having trouble leaving a comment on our blog but it is because of that darn word or letter deal. It sure has taken the spam comments far away.

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  22. Thanks so much for this post. That woman is trying to learn about blogging and appreciates the info. We also don't like automatic music. We are ususally lying on top of the monitor and the speakers are right behind, so we get startled (and that woman jumps).

    Taffy and that woman

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  23. Great Post Jan! You rock! For me its the glittery gifs and the music that drive me nuts!
    Kisses
    Nellie

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  24. We used to be guilty of the music thing too, and when it started driving us nutty, we figured it was doing the same to anyone who visited, so we took it off. I did like the chimes widget. You could play it with your mouse,IF YOU WANTED TO.
    Some people put a widget for music at the top of their blog and let their readers decide if they want to listen or not. Lovely idea. Don't know how to do it.
    love,
    brandi

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  25. We wondered if that pup was going to jump down! Wow! It was a very long way to the ground.

    Agree about the music. Mom has TV or radio on if she wants some sound. Prefer to not have it on blogs.

    Good suggestions!
    Happy Sunday,
    ~ Jasmine

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  26. That was such a cool video. Denali and I have been working on escape tactics to get us out of our room denali has been jumping to try to pull down the door handle, but we might have to use the climbing trick.

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