Introducing FastAVC

Possibly the single most common private email that I get regarding this blog is about the slow page load times and the ugly bling all over the sidebars (which are, of course, related). I must have gotten fifty to a hundred of such emails over the past six months.

And then Scott Heiferman wrote this last week on his weblog:

Fred Wilson's blog is ugly. The words are wonderful, but is there any widget-badge-crap-bling-thing he WON'T put on it?

The answer to that last question is basically no. If I like a web service and want to integrate it with my blog, the "widget-badge-crap-bling-thing" is going up. That's how I like it.

But I also recognize that many of you are tired of the slow page loads, the jarring rails, all sorts of javascript trying to grab your attention away from my posts.

I've been thinking about how to offer a "fast and clean" version of this blog for several months. I've been focused on my blog's feed, because if you read my blog in a feed reader, you get the fast clean experience everyone seems to want.

And then I looked at my feed discovery page on FeedBurner and realized that it was pretty damn close to what people were asking for. The words and just the words.

But that wasn't quite enough for me. I want to retain the basic look and feel of AVC.

Last spring Nick Denton showed me the new publishing system they are building and using at Gawker, code named ganja (gotta love code names that big companies won't use).

The idea behind ganja is that Gawker's bloggers can all blog in whatever blogging tool they like best. Ganja takes the feeds that come out of those tools and publishes them in a consistent look and feel. There's a lot more to it, but I love the idea of breaking the content creation and content display systems into discrete parts and using them in a distributed manner.

So I've done the same thing with FastAVC. I've registered the name fastavc.com and currently it redirects to a new FeedBurner discovery page of my blog's feed. The template has been edited to give it the look and feel of AVC, and you'll see links to comment on the posts (back to AVC for that so there is only one comment system), and the familiar links on my FeedFlare.

The next thing I want to do is host the FastAVC template on my web server and route the feed through it which will allow me to avoid the redirect to FeedBurner. But it's working fine using the redirect (and has been for several weeks now) and I wanted to let all of you know about it.

If you want to read this blog on the web but get fast load times and no bling, just bookmark www.fastavc.com and read my blog there instead.

Like most things I do with my blog, this is an experiment and a bet on where things are headed. I believe syndication of content is inevitable. I believe that readers should be able to consume my content wherever they prefer to, be it at avc.blogs.com, fastavc.com, on MyYahoo, Netvibes, MyTimes, or some other web based aggregation system, or in a feedreader.

I don't believe in having one single place where people are forced to come to read my posts. So there are two now.

Comments

[Erik Schwartz]

...and there was much rejoicing...

[fred]

now now erik :)

[AlFromChicago]

Fred --
Couldn't you have just created a new style sheet with nothing but the posts -- have it be a link off the home page (that people could bookmark, get a feed, etc.) -- and not gone through all the work you did? We've done it with www.realclearpolitics.com/mobile (though not publicized yet) -- that way you woudn't have to maintain two sites, etc. I understand the value if this is part of a larger migration strategy to a site that you own and control outright without going through TypePad -- but seems like a lot of extra work unless I am missing something.

[Rick]

Yeah, but Al, then it would have to be on Typepad.

Using an RSS feed - the site can be hosted anywhere on any domain.

Now, if Feedburner would add a comments service, we wouldn't even have to visit the typepad site.

[jeremy]

rick, i believe typepad has a comment feed. fred would need to "burn" it in order for you to access it through feedburner.

[Giordano]

Only drawback: it´s impossible to see how many comments a entry has, and if someone now has commented. That will make me stay on the normal blog, but I think it´s an excellent service to your community!

[jeremy]

unfortunately the blogosphere is fractured. i wish the conversation could happen all in one place, instead of spread out across multiple blogs. chances of me missing some key points are rather high.

[Jay W]

For the 50 to 100 that write not liking your love of widgets, count this as one in support.

[Michael Long]

The real problem is that you need to learn how to subdivide your site. As an example, does the music album list really have anything to do with your VC posts? Why not create a personal page or music page with summaries of the few blog posts that mention music, and then put the album list there? Same with books and other non-related items.

Or figure out a way to rotate 'em in and out into the same spot.

At any rate, I agree, as the junk-to-actual-content ratio is way, way too high. And the FastAVC approach is less than optimal, since all you're doing is encouraging people to go there, and never see ANY of your "bling".

[Emil Sotirov]

I don't have a problem with the widgets either... they give a kind of a life to the pages. I do not come to Fred's blog to just "inform" myself... but also to "visit" him with all his "stuff" that "speaks" to me about him while I am browsing his posts. "Visiting" somebody's blog (so easy on the web) works better for me compared to bringing automatically its content in my own space where everything is centered around my own tastes and preferences (rather boring).

And about the "slow" loading of the pages... I am still using IE6 (the audiences I am interested in are with IE) and I don't have problems with Fred's blog.

[Brian Dear]

I only have a problem when the widgets are from competitors :-)

As for the ads, I was able to take care of that with SafariBlock, the wonderful plugin for Safari that does what AdBlock does for FireFox: block selected ads.

So Fred's blog's pageload is back to a tolerable level for moi...

[Ric]

The slow page times never bothered me much - I read the posts in a feedreader first, and if I want to check out or post a comment, I just keep reading feeds while the page loads in another FF tab - the tab shows it's "loading" status, so you only look at the page when it's done. I'm very happy for Fred to try out lots of different things - as Emil says, it tells us something more about Fred, and it has also given me some ideas for my own blog/music to listen to/software and sites to try ... it's all part of the information.

But props to Fred for finding a way to keep his readers happy!

[Charlie]

Just because someone may not like the clothes you wear does not mean you should start stripping for them.