MUSIC WIDGETS SLOW DOWN YOUR BLOG

Copyright-free image from Art-e-Zine

Music – on your blog. A controversial subject…

So many people like to have music widgets on their blogs – but be careful!

These are one of the worst offenders when it comes to slowing down the loading time of your blog – which means you may well lose your more impatient readers.

In fact, PlayList has copyright issues, so will hang up a visitor’s screen (and block them from going anywhere else, or even deleting your blog) for 5 whole minutes – or more! I know this for a fact, as it keeps saying I (being from the UK) cannot view or play their (US) content. Can you imagine how frustrating this is?

HOW TO SET PLAYLIST

Sneaky Momma has a great post on this, showing exactly how to set your PlayList player to only play when people click on it – so no more hung screens, and no more getting blasted with music when you aren’t expecting it (when looking at blogs in the middle of the night because you can’t sleep etc).

I’m trying out Mixpod on my Blogger blog, and it also has a setting so that the music will only play when you WANT to hear it.

HOW TO SET MIXPOD PLAYLISTS

1. CREATE

Go to MixPod > Create New Playlist > Select Music Playlist Skins (big selection, from cute to geeky)

Click Create A Playlist and choose your music (use the + button to add the music)

2. CUSTOMISE

Click Customise – you’ll see two tabs, one is Colour (so you can customise the colour of your playlist skin) and the other one is the important one: Settings

In Settings, you’ll see 4 choices

Autoplay – click NO and the player will only play if people tell it to. This is the magic bit that speeds your blog right up, and stops hanging screens etc.

Shuffle – Again, a simple Yes or No choice. I like Shuffle myself. Or No makes the playlist play in the order you chose.

Loop – Yes or No – so do you want it to play continuously, or just play your list one time and stop.

Privacy – you can choose to keep your list private, so only people looking at your blog will see it – or you can make the list public so everyone on MixPod can see it too, and download it if they think your choices are mega-cool.

3. SAVE PLAYLIST

Give your playlist a name, and click on up to 3 boxes to categorise it (Latin, Soundtracks, Dance etc etc) and also tag it if you wish (moody music, breakup etc etc)

4. SAVE

Click the green Get The Code Button. This takes you to a page where you select your format (Facebook, Bebo etc) and you’ll see the embed code in the box (or you can choose to Post To Another Site, ie: straight to your blog etc, which is the one to choose for WordPress).

If choosing the embed code (you’ll create your own html box to put it in) you need to right-click and select Save All – this saves scrolling! Then paste the code into the box (HTML/JavaCode box on Blogger).

You’re done!

So be nice folks, and set your playlists NOT to play unless people want to listen to them.