Facebook is really big and so are the options available over there. If you want to make a community around your blog then Facebook page is there to do the same and recently Facebook launched Fan Box to show number of Fans and their thumbnail on a website or blog to create huge list of Followers and then share latest post with them. But recently I went thru some of the activities which goes behind the execution of the embedded script for Facebook Fan box and found lot many reasons to remove that immediately from the page. As a result of that analysis, You are not seeing Facebook Fan Box on Internet Techies home page and sidebar as well. Below are some of the points which I found in the analysis of Facebook fan box problems,
1. Lot many HTTP requests made by Facebook Fan Box
The script provided by Facebook for embedding this widget box is really smaller but when it runs at the time of page loading, it actually hit so many HTTP requests for images, JS, and other stuffs. Below attached is a part of list of JS which loads at the time of Internet Techies Fan box loading,
But when I tested the page loading with YSlow, I found that the total number of HTTP request made by Facebook fan box as 8 JavaScripts, 5 CSS, 2 iframes, 13 images and 1 favicon.
2. Lot many JavaScripts
As you can see there are 8 JavaScripts which gets loaded on each request for Facebook Fan Box. The total size of JavaScripts for Facebook Fan box is approximately 500KB and now you can imagine how difficult it is to load the page for the first time for a visitor with slow internet connection.
3. It adds another favicon to your page
As per the Yahoo Developer guide for fast loading of page, the size of the favicon of a website or blog should be really small and it should be cacheable and that’s we prefer to keep the size of a favicon as small as 300 to 400 bytes. But this Facebook Fan Box adds another favicon on your page which is a size of 300 bytes. So actually you are adding 300 bytes on favicon side which will definitely slow down the page loading.
4. Slows down your website
The conclusion side of this analysis is that Facebook Fan Box really slows down the webpage and it will definitely cut down some of visitors who are using slow internet connection.
5. Makes your blog too bulky
Lot many images, JavaScripts, Favicon, HTTP Requests makes your website too bulky and that is because of a single script running for Facebook Fan Box. Remove the fan box, and then test your website on Pingdom or other services to check the page loading time.
If Facebook Fan Box removed from the pages then how to shout about Community, To avoid this Facebook Fan Box Problem you can follow the below option.
Add the Facebook Fan Box on a single post and then provide a link from Home page or other pages thru Sidebar and shout about it. In that way the JavaScripts, Facebook images and other stuffs related to Facebook Fan Box will get loaded at the time of that particular page loading only. You can also create a GIF image to show as similar to Fan Box and link it to that particular post or Facebook page of your blog. People will definitely become a fan in that way as well and since it is a GIF, will not be so bulky.