SubscribeSince choosing Willem’s blog to “advertise” in my sidebar, I thought it was only fitting to move him up the queue. I’ve enjoyed many of his articles and was thrilled that he offered to place my ad on his blog, even though the requirement was a reciprocal link—it didn’t have to be an ad. I hope that after my review, he will keep my ad in place. 
So, Willem’s Internet Blog, here are 10 things I hate about your site:
- Flashback to the days of dail-up—your load time is ridiculous.
- Your sidebar is out of control, hence the ridiculous load time.
- Your blog theme is overused.
- There’s too much information at once.
- Your RSS appears to be broken.
- There’s no contact page.
- What’s with the Wikipedia obsession?
- The green border around most of your images.
- Your blog is not valid, in fact it’s the antithesis of valid.
- What’s with the 2-D and ISBN barcodes?
Details
10 things I hate about your site:
- Flashback to the days of dail-up—your load time is ridiculous. In my last review, I teased Beyond Left Field about his load time. He’s got nothing on you. Using Firefox 2 on my PC, it took your homepage 26 seconds to load, and I’d been to your blog before in this browswer. Using Safari on my Mac (a browser I hadn’t viewed your blog in) it took your blog 37 seconds to load. Then I ran your blog through Web Page Analyzer. The results were not pretty (Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size image.):
What does this mean? It’s obvious. Your blog takes WAY too long to load and I bet you are missing out on a ton of new readers because of this. The first step should be a no-brainer (see #2). I also recommend you check out the Web Page Analyzer. Run your URL through it and read the results. It will give you all of your load time stats, as well as a list of all of your individual objects, and recommendations.
- Your sidebar is out of control, hence the ridiculous load time. You have so many widgets and “things” on your sidebar it’s no wonder your load time is out of this world. Do you really need an animated tag cloud that doesn’t blend in to your look-and-feel? Do any of your readers really care “Where I’m At”? Besides, since you belong to every social network under the sun, they can surely find you this way.What does this mean? Very simple: get rid of the crap. Some of the items on your sidebar are simply not necessary. Take your sidebar back and put it to work for you. I would recommend in place of things like Feedjit, visitor flags, my nerd score, etc., you place more relevant links to your own blog. Things like “Popular Posts,” “Comments,” and some post excerpts from your other blog.
- Your blog theme is overused. I know of 2 other blogs with the Aspire theme, one of which I frequent regularly.1 Normally, I would say this is not a big deal—what are the odds that the average reader is going to ever come across these blogs with the same theme (since they are completely unrelated), however, you both belong to Entrecard. I’m guessing I’m not the only person who has visited both of your blogs.What does this mean? Of course I would recommend a new theme
or a custom theme. Honestly, a custom theme is the only way to ensure that no other blog looks like yours. This is an option, however, that many bloggers are not comfortable persuing.2 - There’s too much information on the main page. Your articles contain great content, meaning most of them are pretty long. Additionally, not everyone is interested in everything, but they still have to scroll through long posts to see what’s next.What does this mean? Since you are using WordPress, make use of the awesome
<!--more--> tag. This tag allows you to show a post excerpt on the front page, and the entire post content on the permalink page. This helps readers scroll through your blog faster, finding more posts that interest them, and it keeps your text-heavy content from looking so overwhelming. There are also some SEO benefits in using the ‘more’ tag.3 For additional information, check out Post Excerpts and the More Tag in WordPress. - Your RSS appears to be broken. I’m not able to display your feed in IE7 or Firefox 3. In FF I receive a message regarding an XML parsing error, and IE states the feed cannot be displayed due to coding errors.What does this mean? Go in and have a looksie at your RSS.
- No contact page. Sure, you belong to every social network under the sun. There are people out there, however who prefer not to use social networking, or who don’t want to jump through hoops and leave your blog just to contact you.What does this mean? Include some kind of contact page with your email information and/or a form. I use EmailMe. Their form contacts are simple, customizable, and free.
- What’s with the Wikipedia obsession? Sure, you have some pretty brainy posts and there’s bound to be a term or phrase some readers won’t understand. It’s also great that you want to educate them. It is insulting, however, to assume they don’t understand words like ‘download’ or ‘online’.4What does this mean? Be more discerning regarding your Wikipedia links. Only provide links to terms that are outside of normal internet language.
- The green border around most of your images. This green border seems to come out of nowhere, and it’s not consistent. It appears around most of your images, but there are a few without it. Maybe it’s a link thing? The issue is that while it may work for certain images, it doesn’t work for elements like your signature. If you were writing a letter on paper, would you put a green box around your signature?What does this mean? Get rid of the green border. Not only does the color NOT match your blog’s look-and-feel, it’s really distracting around most of your images.
- Your blog is not valid, in fact it’s the antithesis of valid. When I ran it through the W3C validator there were 391 errors. I know that when using a pre-made theme and including lots of 3rd party widget content you can’t control coding problems. The issue is that at the bottom of the blog you state “Valid XHTML and CSS” and you provide a link to the validator populated with your URL. Not a good idea.What does this mean? 1) Don’t state that your blog is valid when it’s not, and 2) don’t provide a link to the validation service! The other option is to go through your blog and fix all of the validation problems.
- What’s with the 2-D and ISBN barcodes? ‘ll pretend I know, but enlighten my readers.What does this mean? That’s what I’d we’d like to know. What do these mean? Do I have to turn in my geek badge for not knowing what these are for? I thought barcodes were for scanning my groceries at check-out.
In Summary
The content on your blog is very thorough and it’s apparent you love what you do. It’s also apparent that you love gadgets and can’t resist all of the bells and whistles that can be added to your blog. My advice? Resist. Pare down the sidebar and the plugins. Your blog (and your readers) will thank you.
- The load time of this blog is about a third of what your load time is, BTW. [↩]
- I think now is a good time to remind you that Web-Betty does design.
[↩] - I’m not going to cover any SEO benefits, as I’m not experienced enough at SEO to talk about it. Hey, at least I’m honest! [↩]
- There is a link to ‘download’ on the post “Windows 7 slow” and there is a link to ‘online’ on the post “Web 4.0, Another Definition”. [↩]
I would only suggest to Willem that he follow your advice as best he can. I immediately changed some things as per your tips and I still have a little more to do. But I saw some really neat advantages to a little housecleaning…
Thanks RedRaider! I always hope my information is helpful. I like the changes you’ve implemented at Beyond Left Field, BTW.
Wow…
This is a very helpful review indeed. The consequence is that I have to find some time to do a lot of things. I have done some by now. The most interesting one was the green-border problem. It had been quite annoying to me, too, but I didn’t find a way to solve it until I went through the CSS file that came with the theme line by line. Changed the 1px border to 0px and they’re gone….
Then, I’m no designer at all. That’s why I use the ready-made theme. I also like this theme. I guess I need to see what I can do to customize it into slight uniqueness… (is that proper english?, note, it’s not my native language either…)
Load time is an issue. I already did the following things to speed it up before your review:
wp-super-cache plugin
wp-widget-cache plugin
eAccelerator PHP plugin
redirect part of the site through Coral proxies (which turns out to mess up my rss, needs to be fixed)
I have now made a start to remove some things I didn’t think I want… I think it’s still not enough…
My site is hosted on my own server. I do have a rather slow uplink so that’s one part of the problem I’m not going to fix. Hosting elsewhere costs money that the weblog doesn’t earn back. I’m not into monetizing blogs much so this just isn’t an option. I hope the quality of content will still draw some in. In fact, Entrecard has helped me get started very well.
The validity statement was part of the theme as well and easy to remove. I had seen the problems before. It’s not possible for me to fix all those (time, time, time…)
I’ve added a mail-address-picture to the sidebar, introduced the more-tag to most posts and removed some of the wikipedia links. All very good suggestions.
A blogpost about barcodes is being written and will appear this week…
I am very grateful for the useful and extensive feedback you have given. I will continue to work on some improvements but also realize that it’s not up to me to create the perfect website. I’m no developer, nor am I a designer, nor do I have the money to outsource both tasks…. I am however always open to suggestions.
Thanks again and keep coming back to my ever improving weblog!
Willem
While it’s taken me some time to get back to your comments, I have been back to your site on several occasions since my review and have noted several improvements. (I also found the bar code post very informative.)
If you don’t make any other changes, the biggest thing you need to worry about is your load time. With more and more readers on DSL, cable, and T1 lines, a slow-loading blog is going to get skipped over–great content or not. I would hate for potential readers to miss out on what you have to say. (BTW, I’m so impressed that English is not your first language!)
While you may really like this theme, I will tell you that 1) it’s severely overused, and 2) it doesn’t “match” your content. I think you’d benefit from a more technical type of theme. (I’m happy to help you in this area if you are interested.)
All in all, however, I really enjoy your blog, as do many others. Keep up the great content writing.
Thank you for the opportunity to help you improve!
Thanks for the nice comments again. I’ve tried so many themes and dislike so many. I kinda like the old fashioned look of the theme I use. Making it B&W added an edge to it, but I still would want to simplify the graphics a bit. But that’s time consuming (very).
There are many ‘more technical looking themes’ but many of those are overused as well. In the end, I’ll have to get my own theme, but that may well be a fork from the one I have. I have called the theme Aspire2 (the original one is Aspire). There probably will be Aspire# to come..)
I have tried changing themes in the past. that has many side-effects. Plugins can stop working, layout gets scrambled, pictures I’ve chosen in posts in the past may no longer seem appropriate. I really don’t want to get into that business again…
I’m going to keep working on this, don’t worry. If there are things that I can’t do myself, I’ll take you up on the offer to help!
Thanks
The modified color scheme does make yours stand apart from the others. Good job–I’m sure it was quite an undertaking.
I still have 2 words for you: load time.
I did like the review – I always open the website (it concerns) in a new tab….. Some of your points I have been noticing before also…. (yep – SLOW…. = Willem; I am running my homepage also in Holland – paying about 28 euro a year…(domain included) = is a bit more than 50 cents a week… it doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby…
).
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I agree with Sjeltur. There are SO many affordable options out there!
Willem, your site would be great if you implement at least some of the things suggested in this article. That download time is terrible. You need to half that time and when you have managed that, you need to half it again.
You are loading 12 Javascript scripts to start off with and then you still have snippets of Javascript all over your code. The speed issue most probably has its root cause right there.
Web-Betty, once again a nice, honest and helpful review.
Well, I implemented quite a few of the suggestions… Lyndi, I would like your feedback, too! Did I indeed reach ‘greatness’
I think you’re getting there.
This is my first visit to your site and I will definitely be back. Not only is your content focused and original, it’s helpful. I’m off to subscribe…
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Love the feedback, and Love the name!
There’s a new review coming very shortly!
Awesome review and it is good that Willem is taking the review and working on some of the issues.
Whenever I use a free theme for either my WordPress or Blogger blogs I like to change stuff to make it look a little different than others using the same themes.
It can be a pain changing stuff when you’re not au fait [sic] with all the code and stuff, but there are resources and people who are awesome at helping out (thanks Lyndi).
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You are right, Mik, that even small tweaks to free themes can make your blog stand out from the others. Unfortunately for Willem, this blog is so stylized it would be very difficult to make design changes.
Let’s see what happens.
Well, I’m almost begging for your feedback on what I’ve done……..
A follow-up post is a good idea, though I think you know what I’m going to harp on.
I cleaned up more stuff and did something to the theme that I’m not so certain about… It’s different yet not so warm and welcoming, still it’s pretty much the same. If anyone has a suggestion for a free/open source tool that can change the color-scheme of a large number of pictures at once, that’ld be very helpful.
I don’t know if download times improved noticebly, it will not be fast with my uplink (ever) unless I revert back to a html-clear-text-site which I don’t want either…
This Javascript thing is quite complex. The theme comes with javascripts, Some plugins do, too. add even a few widgets and in no time there’s lots… I guess one could say the same from pictures (there are many very small ones) I’m not sure what I can do to optimize further.
I’ve been thinking about a hosting provider, but money is something that just doesn’t grow on trees and if it does, not in my garden….
Tips welcome of course…
Was it something I said?
I’m getting an error when I try to access your blog…
temporary hick-up (i hope..)
I’m not at all cross, rather very thankful to what you said…..
I see the changes (as noted from all of my other comments before this one).
As of right now, 1) the new color is a good change to differentiate your theme from the look-alikes, 2) your load time is better but there is still a lot of room for improvement there, and 3) I love that you reduced the number of Wikipedia links.
Ouch! ;o)
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hee hee, I like to think of it as “constructive pain”
Keep working on that load time, Willem. 33 seconds???? OMG, I was in agony and the only reason I kept waiting was because I was counting to see how long it would take.
There is so much clutter in the sidebars and the truth is, you don’t need MOST of it. Your site will feel cleaner and create less distraction if you take out those gimmicky buttons and widgets. Be honest with yourself about what is required and get rid of what isn’t. If you need someone to be honest for you drop me an email.
Betty mentioned there is no contact page but you do have your email in the sidebar. The trouble is, it’s not linked and too small to read clearly.
Does anyone actually use the “Rating” feature on your posts? Doesn’t look like it so ditch it. One less thing for your site to load. It’s a database call that is actually making your site look bad.
Betty has given you some truly fantastic feedback, Willem. Honestly, it’s worth a great deal of money for this kind of advice. I hope you’ll put it to good use.
Money? Did Rebecca say money?? Show me the money! LOL!
Dropping the rating thingy is a good tip. I’m going to do that right away. It’s a plugin that’s causing too much trouble anyway and indeed it isn’t used that frequently. People should use digg to rate me (but also that doesn’t happen frequently…)
I’m not much of a rater or a Digger.
I used to have ratings on my blogs as well and was happy to see them go when I removed them.
I noticed tonight Willem, that your blog seems to load faster, and you greyscaled the theme to make it stand out. The load time is greatly improved, at least for me running Chrome.
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Chrome is my favorite browser as well. Chrome is especially fast at working with javascript and people have pointed out to me that my site’s full of it… (which I can’t change that easily).
I would love to use Chrome as my main browser. I’m just too tied to FF right now with my toolbars and stuff.
so was I about two years ago. But because of the very annoying slowness of FF I moved to k-meleon first (which uses the same engine, so supports all sites FF supports) and when Chrome came, I was hooked very quickly. My move to K-meleon helped me get over the lack of extra functions and plugins in FF, Chrome added even more speed (and even k-meleon was fast).
I only fire-up FF when I want do use very specific plugins (like downthemall).
Maybe I’m late to the party (actually I know I am!) but the site is still really slow. However, the slowness is in the time it takes for the site to connect. Once it connects, the site itself loads fast. Therefore, the problem seems to lie with the choice to run it locally.
When I tried loading the site, it took approximately 20-25 seconds just to connect. Most people will not wait that long for a site to load.
I am amazed to hear that this site is running on a personal web server. I don’t know if the ISP concerned allows this – many do not. Most people who cannot afford to run a domain do not try to. Why not use WordPress.com or Blogspot?
On a different note, Web-Betty’s replies here are really difficult to read. Light pink on a white background is very hard on the eyes
Ben Barden – Blog Tipss last blog post..10 underused and neglected HTML tags
hmmm. The connect shouldn’t be slow because of the local hosting… I’ll see what I can tweak in my configs here.
You were saying some things about the layout of this site…. I think the text is just too small to read comfortably, but my browser lets me scale it.
And if we’re going to ‘return the favor’ of giving advice…
1. how come the Entrecard Widget sometimes doesn’t load at all, and sometimes appears much later than the site itself?
2. how come if I click on Lyndi’s name, the redirect to her site doesn’t work?
3. why are certain sitebar items centered and some lined-out to the left?
no offence, just friendly remarks here…
You and Ben are banned.
Okay, you and Ben have forced me out of my “slothness” and have made me go in and make tweaks to many of the things that have been on my to-do list for some time. (And no offense was taken
) I have:
1. Increased the font size for readability. This bugged me too.
2. Changed the threaded comment color.
3. Made a few other color/font changes to some headers and links.
I still have more housekeeping to do, but hopefully these improvements will quiet my critics.
Oh, and to address the EC issue, I have no control over the their widget. I’ve noticed problems with it loading at many blogs, unfortunately, not just mine.
Ah, one more thing…. I run my own server because that’s actually something I like to do. My ISP allows that sort of thing, so no problems there. I’m tech-savvy enough to make it work, but I can’t change some of the limitations of my internet connection (although I’m contemplating moving ISP one day and even to get professional ISP services (including a better uplink).
My expertise is not so much the design aspects (which the review points out nicely) but rather the technical things. That’s why I actually like the control hosting my own server gives me… I can play tricks with e-mail, scripting, back-ups, and many other things (like running twitterbots such as @wikipediabot and @dateinfo and @random_nr. My server is also my toy…. see?
Willem is an über-smarty-pants!
With words like that, your spelling checker must go bonkers….. I’ll take it as a compliment though….
In fact some of the speed improvement (or lessening of the slowness???) was realized by optimizing my apache configuration which I could never do on a hosted site…..
Damn you Ben! No reviewing the reviewer, LOL!
Please get back to me on the speed. I have done some additional things… Is it still a debacle or am I finally getting somewhere?
If it helped, I’ll tell you what I did…
The last time I loaded your blog (about 35 minutes ago), it still took over 40 seconds…
hmmm. That’s not particularly helpfull…. I’ll have more work to do on that one… 40 seconds, that’s half a lifetime, two capucino’s and some muffin’s with time to spare for a sandwich…
Still seems to be very slow. The main issue I can see is that a slow uplink creates a bottleneck. Imagine if a few people try to access your site at the same time, can your connection handle that? How many people could access the site before it became a major problem?
Ben Barden – Blog Tipss last blog post..10 types of blog: Can you spot yours?
I know Ben, However, I don’t have the illusion that so many people will visit my site that the bottleneck will really cause problems. Note that the site loads in half a minute, so without too many problems I could support two people a minute, 120 an hour or a maximum of 2880 a day (if they spread nicely). well, That’s not going to happen, is it?
How to submit my site for review. In fact how to get in the queue to get reviewed.
You’ve been added to the queue Atul.
[...] 10 things: Willem’s Internet Blog (47) [...]
I know this is an older review but i have two questions.
why is it sooooo hard to give up all of those widgets? You have the most useless widgets I have ever seen!
“Some badges and stuff” “Hidden Badges” can be completely removed. You dont need ANY of those.. and the “social network” can be cut down to one link to your twitter, facebook, or other account. No one needs to see EVERYTHING you posted..
Also, yes, the theme is not good for your topic. One thing you have to remember is on the internet, you are not writing for you. If you were, it would be private. I am a techy person, and looking at the theme turns my stomach (personally i hated it BEFORE it was over used) and if you want people to enjoy your content, they have to enjoy looking at it.
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