On to day 3 of my trip to BlogHer '12 in NYC...  This Saturday, I was a little wiped out from all of the hustle and bustle of yesterday, and had vowed that today would be a little more peaceful and laid back.  There was one class I was dying to go to, How to Price and Value Your Services, but other than that, I was planning on making a full day of visiting with the vendors at the expo.

The one great thing about having so many fab vendors at expo is that you never have to pay for food and drink, if you're frugal and time your visits accordingly.  For instance, I knew exactly where the Dannon table was for a free sampling of yogurt, then I'd hit the Nescafe booth for a cup of joe flavored with some of their yummy new coffee creamers, and finally, I'd round off breakfast with a cup of fresh fruit from Dole.

Call me cheap, but I'm proud to say that if you plan well, you can literally eat almost every meal in this way.  During my whole four-day stay in NYC, I only bought lunch on Thursday, a midnight snack of a Snickers and a bottle of milk and a slice of pizza.  Since New York is a lot more expensive than Texas, it definitely behooved me to try and cut spending wherever I could.  For instance, that Snickers and bottle of milk I bought cost me a whopping $5.78!

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If you've been keeping up with my BlogHer '12 Series: From a Newbie's Perspective, you'll know that we're now on to Day 2.  This was technically the first day of BlogHer and I couldn't wait to get started.  I had a great night's sleep which helped put my traveling woes of the previous day behind me.

There were three classes that I was very interested in attending, and I was hoping that the wise gals of the blogosphere leading each one would throw me some proverbial pearls of wisdom to help take my blog to the next level.  Unfortunately, I have to admit that I wasn't too enthusiastic about each class once I attended.

I've only been blogging for about 2.5 years, which hardly makes me a veteran, but everything I learned in the first two classes seemed geared for the super newbie...someone who basically started blogging a few months ago.  This led me to blow off the last class and hit the vendor expo to chat it up about some of the latest and greatest new products out there.

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Hello everyone!  You may be wondering why I've been a bit scarce around here lately and it's because I'm super excited to be attending my very first BlogHer conference in New York City.  And of course, things in my own life haven't been running that smooth lately which means that the whole pre-BlogHer post to tell you I was going and all that jazz just didn't quite make it to my finished pile of things to do.

But why bore you with these details?  Let's just jump right in to Day One of BlogHer '12!

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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.)

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The point of this post is to provide a step-by-step guide to creating a partial RSS feed WITH pictures using both WordPress and Feedburner.  Now at this point, you may be wanting to get into the age-old debate of which version to serve your readers: a full or partial RSS feed?  I will briefly give my opinion on this issue, but then quickly move on to the real topic at hand.

I have been blogging for a few years now and for the greater amount of that time have served my readers with a full RSS feed.  Unfortunately, I found that the traffic to my actual blog started to diminish rather substantially.  I wanted to provide my readers with content that was easily accessible to them, but I work very hard on the "experience" that is my blog.  Only interacting with my blog from a feed is like watching a football game on TV.  It's nice, but definitely not as exciting as being there in person.  Thus, I've decided to pull my readers in from their armchairs and onto the sidelines.  {Okay, enough football metaphors...geesh, I shouldn't write a post after watching hours of Monday Night Football with my husband}.

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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.

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