Keep Loading Times Sane
What is it with all these people that try to show hundreds of posts on a single page? The search engines will still direct people to your blog even if something you wrote is no longer featured on the home page!
Please, cut your visitors some slack. Limit the number of items you display on the page. This will make sure your page doesn’t freeze the users browser for an extended period of time. Seriously, nothing stops me from bookmarking a page that I might otherwise have liked, as having it clog things up or crash my browser.
The same goes with blasting up hundreds of ad banners and other externally served items. These all take time to download as well. Get rid of it. Make your site popular by writing thoughtful content, then you won’t have to bury it with advertising in order to commercialize it, assuming you decide to go that way at all.