To speed up your blog, start by choosing plug-ins carefully
This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the network and cloud. Thank you for the permission to reprint, hereby thank you.
I believe that webmasters and bloggers who value SEO will pay special attention to the loading speed of web pages, because loading speed is one of Google’s ranking scoring items. I have written a series of articles on “Website Performance” before. Interested webmasters can learn how to deal with different topics separately.
Since the number of inquiries about improving “webpage loading speed” has always been high, even if readers were asked to read these related articles in the past, they might still come back and ask the same question after a while. Therefore, this article decided to put together a relatively simple and clear judgment process, so that webmasters can do their own health checks and decide which plug-ins that slow down the website need to be removed.
- Key factors affecting web page speed
Due to the rapid advancement of technology, the performance of today’s computers and mobile devices has made it easy for us to eliminate factors that affect web page speed. In the past, the execution performance of Javascript may be affected by the interpretation engine of the CPU and the browser, but now most users’ powerful CPUs, memory capacity, and new browser versions allow JS to be executed in an instant. Even some CSS3 may require more CPU operations than JS.
Nowadays, most of the execution of web pages is waiting for network transmission time, that is, various HTTP requests:
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Image URL
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External JS URL
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Outbound CSS URL
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Iframe external link URL
In short, don’t be too nervous when you see a lot of JS in the template. You only need to learn to identify URL strings that start with HTTP (Note 1). Do these external links and plug-ins need to be removed?
It should be noted that “A Tag” also has an HTTP link, but it will link to other websites only after clicking. It does not mean that the content of this HTTP link will be loaded on our website, so it will not affect the page speed.
Note 1: Not every URL will start with HTTP. URLs can also be represented by relative URLs (for example, starting with a slash ”/” is one of them), or they can also start with a double slash ”//”, which also increases the difficulty of identification for novices.
- Levels that affect loading speed
Here are the factors that affect website loading speed, from mild to severe:
1. Hyperlink
That is, the A tag mentioned earlier does not affect web page speed.
Since it doesn’t affect it, why mention it specifically? Because alternatives to plug-ins will be mentioned later to give readers an impression first.
2. HTTP request using CDN
HTTP requests that provide CDN (Content delivery network) services will automatically find the node server closest to the visitor in the world, which can reduce a large amount of network transmission distance and time.
For users of the Blogger platform, there are great advantages through CDN. According to the official Google forum “Loading speed and page optimization questions”, if the data of the Blogger platform is stored through Google’s CDN, the access speed of the website will definitely be faster than that of other blogs.
3. Non-CDN HTTP requests
Without CDN’s HTTP request, it returns to normal network transmission, which will also have an impact on the response speed of the server host, as well as the number of countries and nodes passed through.
It is recommended that all external links used by the blog, such as JS/CSS/images, should be provided by a CDN service, otherwise the page opening speed will be greatly affected.
Basically, the plug-ins introduced by WFU BLOG in recent years are mainly CDN external connections. This is the reason.
4. Useful plug-ins using IFRAME
The reason why this is not easy to distinguish is that you need to open “Chrome Developer Tools” to check whether this plug-in generates IFRAME on the web page.
For example, AdSense ads, Facebook like buttons, and Google Maps all generate IFRAME.
Why does IFRAME have a greater impact than ordinary JS external connections? Because IFRAME means loading an entire HTTP URL, the content inside may be extensive, or several JS external connections may be executed to load multiple images, audio and video files, etc.
The best example is AdSense ads, which are amazing if you take a look at them using the Chrome developer tools. Therefore, as long as the website places fewer AdSense ads, the performance of the webpage can be improved.
- Evaluate whether the plug-in is removed
With the above concepts in mind, you can evaluate some plug-ins commonly used by blogs and see if they need to be removed, or if there are better alternatives.
1. Plug-in without HTTP external connection
In the past, many people asked questions, worrying whether a certain plug-in would affect the speed. In fact, the plug-ins in question do not have HTTP external connections at all, but it is indeed not that easy for ordinary users to tell whether there are HTTP external connections.
In fact, there is a relatively simple way to judge: Does this plug-in need to obtain external data to display?
Here are a few common plug-ins that do not require HTTP requests and therefore do not affect speed:
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Blogger navigation bar drop-down menu﹍Installation easy package
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Quickly return to the top of the webpage Go Top button + various animation effects
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Blogger 数字分页导览 → 如果知道怎么把 JS 塞在范本中的话，这个外挂就没有 HTTP 请求
2. Social sharing button
Many websites will install social sharing button plug-ins like AddThis. If the premise is to reduce HTTP requests, there is no need to install such plug-ins.
Taking Blogger as an example, you can refer to this article “Modify Blogger official share button” to place social sharing buttons in the form of hyperlinks on the website without using plug-ins.
3. Related articles plug-in
Related articles are very important plug-ins for blogs. Placing them at the end of the article can effectively increase readers’ stickiness and retention time.
Many websites will install LinkWithin or related article plug-ins launched by AdSense. The content of these plug-ins is more complex and the speed will be slower.
Because obtaining information about articles related to your own website actually comes from your own domain, taking Blogger as an example, you can use the following plug-in instead, which is faster:
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“Blogger related articles V2” using thumbnails
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“Blogger Extended Reading Gadget” displayed in plain text
The reason for the faster speed comes from the fact that the code is less complex and the HTTP requests are to the Blogger server, which has CDN.
4. Like button
Whether to place a like button plug-in needs to be evaluated based on the characteristics of your website.
Taking the WFU website as an example, after long-term observation, we found that few readers click like on the website, and most of them do so when sharing to FB. Therefore, this website does not place any like or +1 buttons.
But the sharing button is necessary, just refer to “2. Social Sharing Button”.
5. Message board plug-in
In fact, various message board plug-ins are very large, whether it is Facebook, Google+, or Disqus. For this item, webmasters are still required to evaluate based on the characteristics of their own websites and determine that the usage of the message board plug-in will be greater than that of the native message board before considering leaving it. In fact, in addition to being fast, the native message board of the blog also has SEO advantages that cannot be matched by any plug-in. Therefore, the WFU station only places Blogger official message board, please refer to this article “Advantages and magical uses of Blogger official message board﹍Enhance SEO search ranking”.
6. Sidebar plug-in
*Official tagging tool
The above are all common sidebar plug-ins, which read the data of your own website, that is, send HTTP requests to the Blogger server.
As mentioned before, the Blogger server has a CDN, and the response and transmission speed are very fast. Webmasters who have related needs do not need to specifically remove such plug-ins.
7. HTTP external connection with CDN
Except for the plug-in that is sure to read Blogger domain data, the others will be external HTTP requests. So when using these external connections, whether it is JS/CSS, you must first look for a CDN service to speed up the transmission.
Here are some common projects with CDN external connections:
8. Plugins for other HTTP requests
In addition to the above, only IFRAME and plug-ins without CDN are left (if you really can’t find a CDN).
As mentioned before, IFRAME loads too many things. You can first judge whether to remove plug-ins with IFRMAE, followed by plug-ins without CDN. Please consider whether these remaining plug-ins are too functional and necessary to be discarded.
If so, just use it with peace of mind and let go of your obsession with performance. After all, there are still some things that are more important than speed!
★ This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the Internet and cloud. Thank you for the permission to reprint, hereby thank you.
★ Image source: Pixabay
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Further reading
- Building a personal brand starts with choosing a good domain name
- Good content is king──How to make search engines and target audiences stick to your website?
- 2017 Taiwan Growth Hacker Annual Conference: Green Vine Vitality, using warm content marketing to create atypical rapid growth
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