I guess the best place to start when trying to improve your current blog's speed, is to take stock in what its strengths and weaknesses are.  In order to truly know either of those things, you must know how to analyze your blog on several levels.  I will never forget what led me to realize there was much more to the health of a blog than the way it looked and the content of its posts.

I had a ton of cute little buttons, showing all of the many blog directories I was a member of, several scrolling image bars showing all of the other blogs I visited and liked and even a slideshow of my favorite family pictures.  I thought my blog LOOKED awesome and was a real representation of me...until, one day it took over two minutes to load the homepage and my blog literally slowed to a crawl.  I called my hosting company at the time and the guy gently broke it to me that I was using WAY too many resources.  This was a concept I had never once considered, which began my never-ending mission to streamline and speed up my blog.  This is a job that I monitor and maneuver daily, for I want to give my readers the best possible experience I can while they're here.  If I don't, I know someone else will and I want my readers to keep coming back again and again, enjoying my blog...not becoming frustrated by it.

If you are just beginning and want to really see how the changes you make affect the speed of your blog, you might want to start a spreadsheet detailing your loading speed, YSlow score, Google Page Speed, etc.  I wish I would have kept these records, for it would have made things much easier in knowing which changes I made worked for my blog and which ones worked against it.

Here's a sample of a spreadsheet that might help you get started:  BUILDING A FASTER BLOG SPREADSHEET SAMPLE

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 sites I recommend you bookmark when trying to optimize your blog's speed.  These sites all offer something a little different and are useful in different ways, but together they are an informational powerhouse!

But wait, there`s more! »

Hopefully, you've read my previous posts in the Build a Faster Blog Series which detailed some excellent resources with which to discover the real health of your blog and how fast it is performing for your readers.  You may or may not be pleased with what you've discovered so far and might be wondering how you can change things for the better.  The purpose of the rest of the posts in the Build a Faster Blog Series is to try and steer you in the right direction on how to really speed up your site.  Unfortunately, this might mean drastically changing the way you're doing things right now.  I promise though, that you will see big results if you embrace the attitude of "if it's slow...it has to go!"

Believe me when I tell you that I have changed virtually everything about my original blog, for I had no idea what poor choices I had made when it came to my blog's speed. I definitely am not claiming to know everything there is about improving a blog, for I still have plenty of challenges I am working on, but here's the things I've come to find are horrible speed stealers thus far. Do the absolute best you can to ditch as many of the following as possible. (Also remember that I am running a self-hosted WordPress blog, so some of my tips and lingo won't really be applicable for those of you running Blogger, Typepad, etc.)

But wait, there`s more! »

If you've read my previous posts, Top 10 Websites for Testing Your Blog's Speed and Top 13 Things to Scrap from Your Blog IMMEDIATELY, you'll know that images can be one of the biggest speed traps for your blog.  Of course, every blog needs to utilize images, for they are engaging and can instantly liven up your posts.  When your blog focuses on product reviews, such as mine does, images and detailed pictures are essential.  The trick though, is not to sacrifice blog speed for blog appearance and this requires certain image optimization techniques to be in place.

I highly recommend you apply the following set of tips and procedures to EVERY SINGLE IMAGE YOU HAVE ON YOUR SIDEBAR(S) for maximum results and improved blog speed. Your sidebar is present on every single post and page, so cleaning up your sidebar's images will definitely help you see a positive gain in speed.

These are the steps I use anytime I place an image on my blog, either in the sidebar or in a published page or post.  This list is by no means definitive...it's just what I've come to find works well for both me and my blog's performance.

But wait, there`s more! »

If there's one true piece of advice I could offer to any blogger, it would be to choose your blogging platform carefully.  There are several viable options out there, but I have to say wholeheartedly, that I would recommend using WordPress.  When I first began blogging one year ago, I started out using Blogger.  I mean, it was free and very easy to use...perfect, right?  Not until just three weeks after I began, Blogger shut me down...without warning, and without reason.  All of my followers, my posts, EVERYTHING was gone.  What sounds like a horrendous experience, actually turned out to be one of the most fortuitous, for I ran to WordPress and to my own self-hosted site.  Blogger eventually reinstated my blog, but by that time, I was already happily blogging on WordPress.

If you are just starting out in the blogosphere, I would recommend putting a lot of time and thought into the theme you choose and make sure you are running a self-hosted site on WordPress.  One of the awesome features of WordPress is the myriad of FREE plugins available, which can do almost anything under the sun.  I wanted to include my list of absolute favorite WordPress plugins, which I think every blogger should check out.  Without further ado, here they are:

But wait, there`s more! »

I wanted to take this opportunity to start a brand new series of posts designed to help all of my fellow bloggers out there.  When I first started blogging almost a year ago, I thought that all I had to worry about was creating interesting content and developing a relationship with my soon-to-be readers.  Boy, have I learned a lot since then!  I soon came to realize that unless you have the money to hire a VERY involved web developer to help you in not only creating, but maintaining your blog's happenings behind the scenes, you better roll up your sleeves and learn some serious computer jargon.

Now, I've always been sort of a computer geek in the closet, so to speak, and I must admit that this blogging journey has kept my intellectual juices going while staying at home with my daughter (which is a blessing)!  In this year of blogging, I've had many ups and downs, but if there's one thing that's remained constant, it's that I learn something new and important almost every day.  One of the most important things I've learned so far is that the speed of your blog is critical to its success.  Especially now that Google, the mother of all search engines, has integrated speed as a crucial factor in both page rank and pages indexed, it's time to share what I know about speeding up your blog.  It doesn't matter if your posts are as proverbially deep as the ocean or as polished as silver, if your blog is taking 20-30 seconds to load, you might as well be writing to yourself, for no one will take the time to hang around and read your posts.

I've already got about 10 posts planned for this series, but I am constantly open to new questions and ideas.

Do you have any questions concerning blog design and speed?  If so, please leave me a comment here and I will definitely do my best to answer them or write a corresponding post about it.

Remember, I'm not a full-fledged, official member of the Geek Squad, just a wife and mommy who has spent a LOT of time and energy researching and experimenting with the constant work in progress in my life...my blog!  (And I was the captain of my high school's computer programming team...now THAT'S pretty geeky!  :))