While I agree with the majority of comments, I disagree with the calendar one, if that calendar indicates what days posts are made on. When I first come to a blog it’s usually through a search engine or link from another blog. I’ll get the nugget of info I came for, then look around.
At this point I’ve already determined if the contents of the blog are interesting to me. So how do I determine if a blog should be added to my reading list? It’s whether or not the blogger produces that content on some sort of consistent basis.
By far, the quickest and easiest way to determine that is via the calendar control. A quick glance at it, over a 3 month time frame should be sufficient to determine the blogging pattern. If it’s on some consistent schedule, weekly, daily, etc, then I’m more likely to look closer. If on the other hand the blog posts are seemingly random and sporadic, the browser tab gets closed and I go on my way.
The second area I agree / disagree is the tag cloud. I find the tag cloud visually disorienting. However it would be nice to have some indicator with the number of posts per tag. Either the ability to sort by number of posts, or the actual number in parens () out beside it.
I already keep all these tips with my exciting innovative and up to date blog. I think I am so stereotypical that I might try breaking some of them just for a laugh…
The problem with relying on comments for more discussion is that a large number of readers will never continue on to them, and will never get that benefit, especially if they show up early when few exist. In aggregate, comments become a giant solid wall of text, regardless of their individual merits. This page is a perfect example of where it becomes too time-consuming to even skim everything - so I mostly read the orange ones. Still, I only read the chaotic opposite end of the spectrum, Slashdot, under duress, so it’s not all bad.
Bloggers like Larry Osterman do great jobs with this - either an unintended follow-up post is made summarizing the most interesting comment threads and expanding on them, or that’s quickly done at the start of the next related entry. Either way, you get the best of the discussion without needing to spend the time reading everything.
Pure blogs probably aren’t the best way to do this, but there’s still ways to help without ceding some front-page space to Anonymous.
I know Blog services (one or two) that do not commit any of these errors. Do you now what heppens to them? No onen joins, users COMPLAIN that those are NOT a blog or that they wouldn’t be “professional” - as if they would know! Mostly gangs of teenagers talking of pets lol.
Of course, the issue is that once a blog has made one of these errors, and had the venture to be among the first ones, and is therefore successful because it sowed amidst dearth, we have a diligent herd of sheep that replicate what the other blog did in order to emulate its success.
Therefore, those errors too replicate themselves as viruses, get installed on every machine, and do you know what happens then? That also our audiences got irretrievably MISeducated to consider a bad paradigm as good design and an error as a… feature.
You can give all the good counseling you may want, and all your points here are exceptional. You missed one though: tiny fonts: all blogs have tiny fonts, normally light colour on white background, and all leave about 50% of the page blank as “margins”.
Successful NONSENSE.
But no matter how good your points are: they will all break against the obtusity that says: we have been used that a blog MUST look like this, if you make a blog look not like blogs ARE but like they OUGHT to be, then… they are not blogs! Do not look like one!!
That’s how folks reason. Now, try to change their minds, the minds of folks who have problem even changing route to go to work!
My favorite, by far, was the over-advertise ridden article on usability. I couldn’t find the text of the article when I initially brought it up. I spend about a million dollars before I learned a think about usability.
You should do something new instead of simply rehashing stuff. Shit can only be kneaded and formed finitely. It also doesnt pay to polish shit as well. I can’t count the number of times I have “red x’ed” a website.
Do something outrageously insane. Steve Jobs released the Macintosh only when it was insane.
“I am going to rip my head off and shit down my neck!”
How many people do you think said the above line? See, number one right here!
Stop making love in the dark. Watch your honey, get close and feel the pulsations.
Great article, I’ll definitely bookmark this and try to work on changing things up in my blog. Hopefully that will attract more discussion to my blog (one of the main reasons I blog is to have these discussions with others, but alas, I am apparently a bore).
Totally agree with all points, but you forgot one of my biggies: the tiresome, faux-modest, faux-self-effacing tagline: “random ramblings”, “random nonsense”, “brain droppings”, “mindless random etc. etc.”. (If YOU really thing your blog’s content is crap, why are you blogging??).
I agree, Meta Blogging is the biggest waste of space, especially when the bloggers aren’t business people, and more like homebodies craving easy dollars. Annoying, mindless and boring.
I’m guilty of a couple of these things so I see you avoiding my blog. My blog is a personal blog. Somedays I share the fact my daughter wants a tattoo and other times I blog about blogging. It is those blog posts that you call annoying that brings me traffic.
Actually a mini-epiphany of sorts, may even wind up changing my perceptions of blogs… It was both surprising and refreshing to find someone putting some real thought into the publishing aspects. Know I’ll prob’ly be flogged for that somewhere in absentia.
Till now I considered blogs as belonging to 2 categories: Tech articles called blogs because To Blog is popular, Rants. One of the chief good points was/is bloggers know about spell checkers and use decent grammar; something that on a good day can’t be said for many, many pro journalists. I’m terrible at spelling and grammar so I watch for it.
At the end-of-the-day maybe you’ll have wound up changing my perception. And while that tidbit won’t matter to anyone but me, it is just cause to say Thanks once again.
dear jeff
your article is very interesting!
Can you explain to me why i must scroll this long page to find the post button? Is not more usable a post button at the end of your article?
many thanks
sara
I started “blogging” back when I was just a 16 year old with a Diaryland page back in '98. I wasn’t trying to “connect” with some giant audience, but rather finding a place to park my thoughts. Within a year or so, I had a huge readership, which only grew each time I changed blogging software (I’m NOT a computer person) and I was amazed at how much of a “rock star” I became just talking about my 'zines, my girlfriends and all the other ridiculous crap going on in my life. People sent me gifts, financed my trip to a big zine convention, etc. That was never my intention!
Still, I only read the chaotic opposite end of the spectrum, Slashdot, under duress, so it’s not all bad.