JennyJ
Member
That's good to know and I will have to do some checking on my blog. How were you testing your site to know the impact of your changes?
Maria Marketing
Active Member
I was testing my blog on a website that tests the speed of them. I think it was called GT Metrix or GT Matrix. I saw it on another discussion here posted by someone.
JennyJ
Member
I'll look for that and do some testing. Thanks
Maria Marketing
Active Member
JennyJ
Member
I haven't had a chance to look for that and do any testing yet but I will be doing it soon. Thanks for posting the link.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
You're welcome. It gives a lot of details beside just speed of your website bit most I don't know anything of so I just look mostly at the loading speed.
JennyJ
Member
Yes it does give a lot of info but the speed number is the main 1 I am looking at and the only 1 I fully understand. I was able to reduce the loading time of my blog by almost 1 second by removing the Facebook widget I was using.
I removed just the Facebook widget from my blog and my blog now loads about 1 second faster. I didn't think that 1 widget would make that much difference.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
That's great. Making it faster by almost a whole second is a very nice increase for removing just 1 widget. I removed 4 total at this point but I might remove more or change them a little.
JennyJ
Member
I removed another one myself but the reduction in the loading times was not that great. I am guessing that the Facebook widget is one that is a cause for many websites to be slower and most people don't realize it. I only found out by removing it.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
Is it one that shows like and your profile image?
JennyJ
Member
Yes it showed those and also some small little images of the people who liked my Facebook page.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
Maybe because it had all those little images showing that was what caused it to be slow. It probably had to check each profile to get the images and that made it slow.
JennyJ
Member
It could have been that. I really don't know what affects the loading times for most things. I am trying out some other social media widgets for Facebook to see if any others are faster loading than the other.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
I was reading about some things that have to do with widgets and loading speed and it said that sometime you have to try different widgets that do the same things because some of them are faster than others.
If you try some others for Facebook you may find one that is fast enough to use without slowing your blog.
JennyJ
Member
I think you are right because I was reading something about it and it said that often the same basic widget but from different developers can sometimes have a big difference on the impact it has on a website.
Maria Marketing
Active Member
I saw a blog post that said something similar to that now that you bring it up. I have really found the speed testing rather interesting so I will be doing more tests on things like similar widgets to see if I can get my blog to be faster.