The other day I found this Gomez test, which tests the performance of your site, and tells you which bits are taking longer to load than others. The three things which were dragging the site down were various external bits and bobs from Newsgator, Technorati, and the Xbox Live Gamercard.
This morning I read on the Scobleizer that Technorati have rolled out a major update which, among other things, has enhanced their performance. One quick Gomez test later, and I can confirm that Technorati is no longer adversely affecting my load times. Having pulled the Gamercard too (which will make an appearance later, just probably not on the home page), I'm just left with a sluggish Newsgator link to do something about.
Update: Looks like Newsgator isn't actually hurting my performance any more either, at least not this morning.
Hi Daniel,
Found your backlink going to our Instant Test page. Glad you found it useful! Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that the free instant test is only run from one backbone node location (MCI in New York). It still provides useful information on what is causing the slowdown, but those performance figures will differ very dramatically based on the geographic location from which a user is accessing your blog. Just wanted to make sure you were aware in case you ran into any other issues.
Mike