Many of you have noticed the new, fresh look and layout of the New Author. I have really enjoyed the videos attached to it now and I hope you have taken some time to check them out as well. One particular comment I got caught my eye. In short it pointed out how the blog loaded much faster than before even though there are a great deal of links involved now.

Needless to say, the revamp of this blog is not entirely the solution for the faster load time and response time; however, the deep cleaning is. How do you deep clean (or spring clean) your blog and why should you? Your blog is an extension of you and your writing. If the saying is true that you only get one chance to make a first impression then what impression will you leave if your blog loads slowly, looks depressing, has broken links and delivers an overall poor experience? Chances are that person will not be coming back; now take it a step further and imagine that your newly released book is attached and associated with your blog. Yes, you run the risk that your book will be associated with the experience had while visiting your blog. I know, it is a little out there but, as many of us know, anything can happen and this is a problem better off fixed then running the slightest risk of bad publicity. What should we do? How do we keep our blogs in shape, fresh and running smooth?

• First, make sure all the links on your blog are active and connecting to the proper destination. Click on each one. Do they take you to the intended site or social network? Do you get an error message? If the link is broken take a few minutes and fix it. If the site your link connects to is no longer active then remove that link from your blog.
• Make sure your layout provides plenty of room for all your widgets, gadgets and things like that. You want your blog to have a comfortable flow to it and not make the visitor feel like everything is crammed together. Also, make sure your layout is supported by blogger, word press, etc. and that it opens quickly. Some layouts have bugs in them and may breakdown after a short time which means you have to reload everything again.
• We love comments but our blog and computers don't. After a time the comments can build up and worse yet, spam can hide in comments. Yes, you can password protect your comments and that will eliminate a large portion (if not all the spam) but it can also limit your comments. It is beneficial to scan through your comments and delete those that are spam, make no sense, spiteful or just don't fit with the article it is associated with. I eliminated a great deal of 'anonymous' comments that were associated with spam and this single action went a long way to speeding up my blogs load time.
• Go back to your older posts and delete the images. You can determine how far back or how current you want to go but keep the images to a minimum. This will greatly impact response time for your blog.