Earlier this evening I discovered that my sites were hanging. I could see that it was the blogcatalog widget that was hanging. I guess they had a problem with their site late in the evening.

That’s the trouble with widgets and badges and banners that have to pull data from another site. If the site is overloaded with visitors or is having a problem it can affect how your own site loads.

I’ve noticed many times that the mybloglog and the blogcatalog widgets have slowed my sites and others that I’ve visited, but it was the worst I’ve ever seen it tonight. So I took both widgets off of all my and my husbands blogs.

The sites seem to load much faster to me now. Well unless something else causes it to slow down. I’ve noticed that in the early morning hours Adbrite, Technorati, and the Truth Laid Bare codes can cause a bit of slow down in loading.

Have you removed your widgets or any other links to speed up the loading of your site? If so, which ones did you remove?