First impressions count, and new visitors to your Ning Network will notice if your Main Page takes a long time to load. Part of the responsibility for making sure that your network is fast belongs to Ning, and we try our best to make sure that things are zippy at all times. We are making continual improvements to the speed at which we can serve your Ning Networks and we are also optimizing the performance of the Ning Network code with each release.
As a creator or administrator of the Ning Network, you’re also partially responsible for its speed, especially on your network’s Main Page. When you add or modify features on your site or make changes to your code, these changes will have an impact on the delivery speed of your Ning Network. Here are three simple tips that should let you get the best mix of features and speed for your Ning Network.
- Excessive use of RSS can slow things down. Sometimes when we investigate reports of a Ning Network being slow, we find something like this:
- Yes, that will be slow. This is because when you add an RSS feature to your Main Page, you’re scheduling that feed to be downloaded from an external server once every hour. If the external server is slow, your Ning Network will take a long time to load during that request. If the feed that’s being loaded is very large, then your Ning Network will be slower with every single request of the Main Page because that large feed needs to be parsed and presented with each request. Once you’ve added a few feeds, this effect is magnified. The golden rule of thumb with feeds is to limit them to 2 or 3 per page. Even then, a specific feed can still have a detrimental effect on your Ning Network speed, so experiment with removing them one at a time to see if there’s noticeable slowness with one particular feed.
- Your Main Page is only as fast as its slowest widget. Text boxes make it simple to embed very cool third party services and external images into your Ning Network. One thing to be aware of though is that if you embed a widget from a slow or unavailable service on your Main Page, it can block the rest of your page from loading while it waits for a response. If you’re seeing a sudden slowdown, try temporarily removing third party widgets to see if any of them are responsible. The same principle goes for items you add into the tracking code form and any widgets you might put in the right sidebar if you’ve purchased the Go Ad-Free premium service.
- Less is more. Reducing the number of features on your Main Page in general will mean faster load times, so consider what items are really essential to showcase your social network on the Main Page and which ones are peripheral. You can also make an impact by reducing the volume of content within a particular feature, like showing only a couple of rows of members rather than five. The other area where less is more is with profile questions. If your Ning Network has more than 10 profile questions, you might consider cutting back on them, as having an excessive number of questions can slow down various parts of the Ning Network including the Members page and individual profile pages. If a few of these accumulated changes can shave a second or more off of your main page’s loading time, then it will be worth it, and the members of your Ning Network will thank you. Give it a try!