What Slows Your Blog Down

That means I am open to discuss whatever I want to this week…hmmm…How ’bout we talk about what sloooows your blog down. Load time that is. I’m no expert on how the internet works or browsers, I’m just going to tell you what I have found out from my own experiences. I will let you know that I do not have the fastest internet in the world. I live in the middle of nowhere so most of you would laugh at my internet speed, but it’s also nice to take us slow-internets into consideration. I know I am not alone in thinking if a blog takes too long to load I click away.
The biggest and most obvious thing that slows load time down is stuff. Lots and lots of stuff on your sidebars. Call me a minimalist but I just keep necessary things on my sidebar. The bare essentials. If you have every countdown widget for winter 2011, videos, and numerous book covers it’s going to slow it way down. So maybe only have one or two countdowns. Maybe post your bookish videos in a post and not on your sidebar. You can always link to them on the sidebar. But if you do feel that everything on your sidebars is necessary maybe you should consider cutting your number of posts per page (in Settings). This will shave some of your load time off, but in my opinion I feel like posts should be more important than gadgets.
Blogger implemented the custom fonts awhile back. They are super cute and it’s a great easy way to customize your blog, but it slows it down. Yes, I do have a custom font for my titles, but I don’t keep many things on my sidebars. So it evens out  If you want to use the Blogger fonts my advice is just don’t over do it. Sidebar titles and post footers, fine. The entire blog text is going to drastically slow it down.
One last thing and this seems to be what bogs down my computer the most…Button slideshows. Crazy, right? But yeah they seem to make my load time much slower. The bad thing is is that I like them. I understand the need for them. It’s awesome to showcase other bloggers you like. I just wish there was a faster alternative.

I've had incredibly slow internet during the day for the past few weeks so this is a great post! I hope some heed your advice because there are a few blogs that I just don't visit anymore because it takes too long to load.
I have a hard time keeping my sidebars as clean as yours. There are just too many events I'm involved in, etc. But my blog seems to be loading good for me so it must be okay.