Drew Boyles wrote:

I recently visited jambands.com for the first time in awhile, and was distraught to watch my bandwidth max out for roughly a minute and a half while I downloaded 320 kilobytes worth of text and graphics (for the record, I use a 56k modem, but like most 56k'ers, I connect somewhere around 40 kbits/sec).

I like the content and layout of your site, but something has to be done to lower the bandwidth.

Cheers from Mississippi,
Drew Boyles

Jambands.com editor Dean Budnick responds:

Okay, this is unequivocally my fault. Please cast no blame at my trio of webmasters who fulfill my humble bidding even though they somtimes chastise me for boneheaded decisions- frankly, Erica hasn't done much chastising yet but she's new :)

The short answer is that on occasion I have made the dunderheaded mistake of focussing on the pixel size of our images and ads without giving any thought to the kb size. However, I'm on the case now and working to see what I can do about making the load time much faster.

Of course the definitive answer would be a front page redesign- and I pledge that is in the works (no really it is, things are proceeding...).