Is the technology on your blog for you or for your users?
Chris Brogan, social media guru, says every serious blogger should ask this question of him or herself. I’m in day 5 of the 9 Days of Chris Brogan Blogging Secrets and today I report the results of implementing three more secrets from Chris’ list (numbers 15, 17, and 18) on my home business blog. These three secrets (from his article “27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community”) are techie-based and focus on plugins, whether you should make people register on your blog, and general technology considerations. Find out how long it took me to implement each secret, whether it was a cinch or completely impossible, and if I spent any money.
Secret #15: Plugins
I have a confession. Like every blogger who has found the administrative control panel and found the “plugins” section, at first I went a little crazy installing plugins on my home business blog. For those of you who don’t know about plugins, a plugin is a mini-application that gives you more features on your blog. For instance, there are plugins to help you track your stats, tag your blog posts, add photos, add a tag cloud, and link into other social media services like Twitter or Facebook.
What’s Chris’ secret on plugins? Consider every plugin before you install it. Ask yourself, “Does this plugin make my blog better, faster, and more interesting, or does this plugin slow down performance and kill readability?”
I checked my home business blog and found eight plugins. Two were stat trackers and did the same function so I deactivated one of them. The other six all served useful functions so I left them. Chris also suggested using Zemanta, a plugin that automates functions like adding pictures (it even provides pictures for you to use). This plugin also brings up relevant links as your enter your blog post in case they come in handy. For instance, for this blog post it brought up links to articles like “Social Marketing Books” and “Follow Blog on Twitter.”
Zemanta was easy to install and, as I do after I install every plugin, I visited my site to make sure that everything still worked (it did). This is a good idea as sometimes plugins can cause glitches in your blog’s rss feed or subscribe functions. Some plugins also increase the time it takes to load your blog in a browser. This blogging secret was easy to apply to my home business blog. The most time was spent researching Zemanta.
Time Spent: 30 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0
Secret #17: Forced Registration
Do you make people register on your blog before they can comment? According to Chris that’s a big no-no. Why? Because while it may keep people from leaving nasty comments on your blog, registration will also slow the conversation and interaction on your blog. I’ve never forced people to register to comment on my home business blog so this secret was easy as pie. However, if you do end up with some nasty comments on your blog, you can handle it several ways. According to Chris you can simply not approve the comment so it doesn’t get posted, you can leave a short non-combative answer, or you can let others defend you (he has a more comprehensive list on his site). In short, a blog is a form of social media and if you restrict flow by forcing registration you’ll end up with a one-way conversation. Let the conversation move where it will … you might even learn something from the odd nasty comment!
Time Spent: 0 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0
Secret #18: General Technology
This secret is just a general consideration about any and all technology that goes with your blog. Chris’ comment is that technology should serve your community and content, not just be installed because it’s cool. This secret goes along with the one about plugins.
I looked over my home business blog for ways in which technology might be hindering community access to my content. I took down the link to DandyID Services (a way for people to quickly access all my pages on various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter). While the idea was really cool, I noticed my blog was really slow to load after I added the DandyID stuff. The link had to first access my account at DandyID before my blog would finish loading. I decided that the four ways I provide for people to connect with me in my blog sidebar were enough. Taking DandyID off sped my blog loading considerably.
This blogging secret is one that all bloggers should take into consideration every few months, when the urge to install more fun and funky plugins and techie-toys has undoubtedly taken over. Slimming down your blog technology to just the essentials is simple and yet can make a huge difference in the accessibility of your blog.
Time Spent: 25 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Stephanie - sorry to hear the DandyID widget was slowing down your site
Was it the WordPress plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dandyid-services/) or one of the JavaScript widgets we offer on our site?
Hi Sara,
Wow, that was a fast response! It was the WordPress plugin that I installed. Maybe I did something wrong but as soon as I installed it and checked it slowed everything way down and sped back up again when I took it off. Any suggestions? I did like the service.
Cheers,
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie,
The plugin only grabs the DandyID info, once every 2 hours.
It then, stores the info in the local blog WordPress database — that is, it “caches” it — for performance reasons.
After the 1st blog page load, subsequent page loads — for 2 hours — will not access DandyID at all.
Thanks so much for trying our plugin. If you get a chance, please let us know if subsequent page loads cause a performance hit. We’re really trying to make the plugin as useful (and efficient) as possible!
Thanks, Neil
Hi Neil,
Thanks a lot for the detailed and thorough reply. I am quite impressed with DandyID’s service level and am much more clear now on how DandyID works. I’ll try it again. I do think it was the first blog page load that was so slow each time. I’ll check it out and see if subsequent page loads takes a long time. Appreciate the educational comment and clarification!
Cheers,
Stephanie