A Blogger's Lament

I admire those who retain a sensible perspective on blogging. By that I mean the bloggers who post when they have something to say and otherwise live ordinary lives that do not depend upon the blog. How wonderful it must be to have no concern over whether the blog is read or not, to care less about statistics, to post without even a thought of whether you last posted yesterday or a month ago. What freedom that must be!

The rest of us are slaves. Oh, we can explain that there is a purpose behind what we do, that the blog serves us in the achievement of some high-minded goal, that it is merely the means to an end. But the fact is that we become slaves to the blog. To blog with a purpose implies that we intend to reach others, for whatever reason. And that means we have to be concerned with traffic, to know that others are reading and that we become more effective in drawing return visits to the blog. So we become interested in statistics, beginning perhaps with a hit counter but soon desiring more details. Then we begin to learn how to ensure that the numbers continue to mount: post regularly, know your audience and deliver what they want, make the blog attractive and easy to navigate. All these are the elementary things that add up to blog success.

But we hunger for more and so, eventually and inevitably, we head for the traffic exchanges. Now the pressure really increases. Suddenly the blog is being viewed by hundreds and we have to think about how to capture some of those fleeting visitors, how to turn them from browsers into regulars. The blog has won and we have become its slaves.

You can argue and point at those who have not posted in weeks and yet still have their blogs circulating through the exchange. My answer is that these are not bloggers; they are wannabes with more money than stamina, would-be bloggers who paid for the exposure and then found something better to do. They may irritate us as the same old post comes up yet again while we work the treadmill but, in truth, they are the ones who have escaped enslavement. They are out there somewhere enjoying life!

It may annoy us that they leave a legacy of constant repetition for us to suffer, but I shrug my shoulders and endure their few seconds of reiterated fame for I know that they earn me one more half-credit towards more viewers for my blog. And it's my blog that I serve - willingly and consciously, it's true, but it is still servitude.

There are others within the eternal circulation of the traffic exchanges that I do feel sympathy for, however. There are some blogs that are frittering away their credits for little reward. And, because it seems to me that someone ought to point this out to them purely from the goodness of his heart, I have decided to volunteer for the task (well, all right, I admit that I am also motivated by irritation at the blogs that I will never read because they have disqualified themselves in some way).

The first of these creatures that I feel so sorry for is the slow-loading blog. Let's face it, even in the best of traffic exchanges, the blog has only thirty seconds to impress. And, if that time is taken up by the blog loading all sorts of junk from other sites, traffic counters, animations, pretty graphics, and buttons that want to phone home, we're not going to wait to read the thing. Some blogs keep my computer's processor so busy that they stop the timer but, hey, don't imagine that this slows me down for a moment. I time the thing with my watch and click on through at the end of 30 seconds - works every time.

Sometimes my own blog can be slow to load. Invariably, the cause is one of the few buttons that I allow it. The worst offenders are Britblog and Technorati, sites that often seem to be very slow in delivering the information requested by the button. They survive on my blog only because they also deliver benefits beyond the occasional inconvenience of slow loading. But these are exceptions; let any of the other buttons cause a problem and they will be out before they know it.

To have long strings of buttons is only increasing the chances that one of them will cause the blog to pause in loading. The same is true for everything you add to your blog. Flickr comes to mind as the worst offender of all. There are hundreds of blogs out there that sit immobile while they call photo after photo from Flickr. Am I going to look at even one of those photos after being delayed for so long? I don't think so!

Of course, photoblogs depend upon such resources for their existence. Ignoring the fact that I don't look at photoblogs (or sound blogs for that matter), there are better ways of going about it than using an external server like Flickr's and so becoming dependent upon its speed or lack of it. If you must have a photoblog, put the photos on your blog server; that way, if the server is slow, at least it's not an outside source over which one has no control that is causing the problem. There is such a thing as optimising as well, reducing the size of the photo file to ensure that it loads quickly, but that is a whole new subject that I won't go into here. As an instance, however, I would mention that the photo of a gecko in my last post is only 47.4kb in size. Even under dial-up, that will load in a split second.

As regards the fancy graphics and animations, I will say nothing except that they are tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot. Clear and simple wins the race every time. And, of course, win the race and there is at least a chance that a blog-clicker might read your blog.

Speed is not the only matter to consider, however. There is also the problem of screen resolution. The majority of monitors these days are set to a resolution of 1,024x768 but a sizable minority still use 800x600. Have a look at your BlogExplosion stats to see just how many of your visitors are set to this resolution. Are you willing to risk that minority skipping your blog because they can't read it? The computer I use at the moment is ancient and so I am limited to 800x600; and some blogs become hopelessly entangled when viewed at this resolution. Some put text over other areas of text so that both become illegible. Others extend beyond the right edge of the screen so that I would have to scroll backwards and forwards to read the text (sorry, but I just ain't gonna do that).

So do yourself a favor and have a look at your blog under 800x600. You might be surprised at what you find. Doing something about it can be a problem, I know. It is incredible to me but some of the templates put out by the blogging sites are the worst offenders in this regard. Professional programmers ought to know better. But even this can be overcome. I have a blogging friend who uses a template designed for 1,024x768. She has avoided any problem by dividing the screen into three columns and using the far right column only for things that don't matter. View her blog under 800x600 and everything that she wants you to read is in plain view.

Understand, I am not criticizing here. It matters not to me whether anyone else's blog is legible or not. These are just suggestions made in a spirit of helpfulness, as one blog slave to another. Just think of all those hard-earned credits that you might be wasting...