Why I Cannot Stand Your Blog (2008 Edition)

For those of you that weren’t around for Sunday’s Pointless Drivel Live show, you missed the big duets spectacular! No worries, you can still go download the show and listen to it as you’re reading quality blogs. You know, like this one. I actually sang with Fab on one song, and there were 18 songs altogether, each one sung by Fab and another amazing blogger.

Here is the my song with Fab: (To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before). Seriously, though, you should download the whole show and check it out. Hilly’s on there, too. BUNCH of people.

And before Fab’s show was, of course, SecondHand Radio.

Kyra was a magnificent guest and I had a wonderful time talking with her. Click on that link above to go to the show’s page, where you can download THAT show, too. (By the way, I’m now ecstatic, not only because I got to talk to Kyra for an hour, but because I can finally upload graphics! Woo hoo!)

Right, I think it’s about time to update my post entitled “Why I Cannot Stand Your Blog.” It’s been two years now since I wrote it and it’s a little dated. So here we go.

Why I Cannot Stand Your Blog (New and Improved 2008 Edition!)

My feedreader is filled with tons of blog feeds. It has been two years now that I’ve been utilizing the marvel that is RSS. I shudder when I recall how I used to use my blogroll to act as a launching point for my blog visits. Clicking on all the links multiple times per day just to see if people posted new stuff? Ugh. No way I can go back to that crap.

Guagamillions of new blogs pop up every day and I attempt to keep my feeds tamed, using a variety of methods that I’ll talk about at some point, I’m sure. Yes, I am routinely adding blogs to my list. There are multitudes of ways, however, for you to make me say, “No way I can go back to that crap.”

As I mentioned in “Why I Cannot Visit Your Web Site,” the bulk of what keeps me coming back to blogs for more is the content. It seems so many people concentrate on their templates, designs, etc. and utterly ignore the content. That’s just plain silly. You can have the prettiest blog design on the planet but that doesn’t mean jack if your content reads like the ingredients list on a box of cereal. Unfortunately, the side of a box of Cheerios is a hell of a lot more readable than most of the blogs out there.

Here are the differences between me clicking on the and me blogrolling you. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but the more of these rules you’re breaking, the more exceptional your writing had better be in order to make up for it.

Why I Cannot Stand Your Blog

So, you’ve got yourself a blog, do you? Well, goody. Let’s look at why I won’t be a regular reader, maybe even why I’m sorry I stopped by in the first place. Some of these are covered in “Why I Cannot Visit Your Web Site.”

Please note any and all items below that have an “X” before them. Correct said problems and resubmit your application to have me revisit your blog in 6 months.

[___] I hate scrolling left and right.

I don’t use my browser (Firefox) in a maximized window. And I don’t like resizing my browser window. It’s set to about a 900 pixel-width, and that’s because I like it that way. There’s no good reason you can’t fit your blog content into that width. If I visit your blog and a horizontal scrollbar pops up at the bottom of my browser window, I’ve got one foot out the door already.

[___] Your color scheme sucks rocks.

Learn about color palettes, complementary colors, etc. If that’s too difficult for you, then stick with a pre-made template. Or have someone else do the design for you. (More about that in Why I Cannot Visit Your Web Site. And, by the way, if I haven’t mentioned this already, that’s an old post. I don’t think all the graphics survived the trip from the old blog (incorrect graphic URLs now) so don’t bust my chops over missing images, OK?

[___] You have a monochromatic mess.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything on your blog is black and white. I’ve seen plenty where all of the colors are just shades of the same one. I visited a blog recently and the owner uses nothing but shades of purple. Blecch. I have nothing against purple, either. It’s just that nothing stands out, there’s no contrast. It’s hard to distinguish links from plain static text. Even the header graphic, while attractive in and of itself, is made up of nothing but purple. It looks like the friggin’ Grape Ape puked all over my screen.

[___] Your text is unreadable.

I’m not talking about quality of writing here, I’m talking about the physical look of your text. Stick with a simple serif or non-serif font. The cutesy novelty fonts are for headlines or banners, not for your blog’s main content. Use boldface and italics sparingly. Don’t type in ALL CAPS. And for God’s sake, don’t do that idiot teen thing wHeRE yOu aLTeRnAtE BaCK aNd FoRtH. Ugh. If you want people to read your shit, then grow up and make your shit readable.

Maybe the color of your font is atrocious. Neon pink text on a black background is not something I’d do to my worst enemy, but I see that crap all the time on Myspace.

For some reason, many people think that black text on a white background is boring and so it’s the first thing they change. Bad call, really bad call. Black text on a white (or light) background is the best way to go. Why? Because it’s the easiest on the eyes. That’s a fact. Our eyes have a far easier time when we have decent contrast between text and background. And if you’re in your teens or 20’s and you don’t believe me, just wait another 10 years or so. Then you’ll regard me as the genius I truly am.

I want to read your blog…at least I want to want to read it. If I have to strain my eyes, though, you can be John Friggin’ Updike and I’m not going to give a damn. Yes, some of my favorite blogs use white text on a black background. However, the quality of their writing makes up for it⁺⁺. Don’t fool yourself, yours probably doesn’t.

⁺⁺And even though the content rocks the friggin’ casbah, I still wind up reading it in my feedreader because then I can read it as black text on a white background. I only click through to the actual blog when I want to leave a comment.

[___] You have NO RSS feed attached to your blog.

Speaking of reading things in a feedreader, if your blog doesn’t have a feed, I am NOT going to read it. Period. Yes, this still happens, though far less frequently than it did when I first wrote this two years ago. Simple rule: no feed, no read. Period.

I cannot be bothered. I won’t be bothered. It’s not like I need another blog to read, believe me. Looking at my feedreader just now, I have 178 blogs all vying for my attention. I know they’re vying for my attention because I am the center of the known universe. Everyone wants me, it’s a fact.

If you don’t know HOW to set up a feed, go to Feedburner, Google for some info and see about making it happen. Call me when I can subscribe to your blog.

[___] Your feeds only list excerpts of your posts instead of listing all of your post’s content.

Again, I can’t be bothered. Excerpts SUCK. Do I have to say again that I don’t have the fucking time to go physically visiting every blog every day? Sure, sure, you argue that you want people to go to your site so you can register another hit on your stats. I get that. But I firmly believe that excerpts HURT traffic more than they help it.

Why? Because when I only see a snippet of your post in my feedreader I pretty much immediately mark it read without bothering to click through. It’s a deterrent, not an incentive. Trust me.

If your content is good (again, content is king) then I’m going to click through to your blog after I read your full post in my feedreader. And I’m going to leave a comment. See? You still get your precious traffic, with the added benefit of not pissing me off. Yes, my convenience should always be first and foremost in your mind.

I’m constantly in the process of adding and pruning feeds in my reader. Within the next week or two (after I get the new 2HT set up the way I like it), I’m going through my feeds and unsubscribing to every single one that doesn’t list full posts.

[___] You don’t even list the full posts on your blog’s homepage.

Instead, there’s a short clip with a “MORE” link that I have to click on to read the rest of the post. I hate that. Fix it. If you have posts that are regularly so long they make War & Peace look like a pamphlet, then perhaps it’s necessary. Otherwise, put the whole post out there. If you like, limit your blog’s homepage to only a few posts and leave the rest to the archives. That way your front page doesn’t run for miles.

There are some rare exceptions to this rule. Kevin is a good example. Dave, too. Whenever they post memes, they put them “under the cut,” so to speak. So yeah, you have to click on the “MORE” link to see the memes. But that’s just it, you don’t have to. I mean, I know a bunch of people that hate memes, so this system works great for those people.

Long story short: MORE is LESS.

[___] You post multiple times a day.

Unfucking believable, some of you people. I’m racking my brain to come up with quality material once a day and you’re posting five or six times a day? No.

I’m not reading multiple posts every day for someone’s personal blog. I’m just not. Nobody is that fucking interesting and if you are I probably can’t stand you, anyway. I’ll hate you by default, just for making me look bad.

Maybe if your name is CNN.com or something – then I’d say you have a reason to post six times a day. Otherwise, take a Xanax and calm your fucking uppity ass down. And delete five of those six posts this second.

Consolidate. Filter. Breathe.

(Just to clarify, I’m not in any way saying that you aren’t a good blogger if you don’t post on a daily basis. That’s just fine and, frankly, makes my life a little bit easier, so thanks. Writing daily is just something I feel I have to do…for me. Otherwise, it just becomes increasingly simple for me not to blog. And I never feel like I’m in a good headspace when I don’t write routinely. Anyway, it’s a personal choice all bloggers must make: how often will I blog?)

[___] Your blog is password protected and/or I have to register to leave comments.

Fuck you and the donkey you rode in on! Who the samhell do you think you are? Perhaps you’re a paranoid freak, I don’t know. Livejournal is notorious for this shit. I blogged over there before I went to Typepad a few years ago. (And now, of course, Wordpress.) Of course, at the time, my whole blogging world consisted of only Livejournal blogs, so it didn’t really matter to me. I was always signed into LJ and could easily comment on all the other blogs I read there.

Now that I know the blogging world is much larger than LJ, my mindset is totally different. At the VERY LEAST you should allow for Anonymous comments. I’m not signing up for another fucking site, OK? I have a BILLION sites I “belong” to already and enough passwords to keep track of.

If you password protect your blog, that’s your business. Just don’t expect me to bother e-mailing you for permission to read it because I won’t. Cannot. Be. Bothered.

[___] You leave your posts closed to comments.

Again, fuck you. If you don’t give a damn what I have to say, then I sure don’t care what YOU have to say. Blogging is about connecting to people, it’s about interaction, it’s about feedback and expression and you showing me your tits. If you don’t allow for comments, screw it. I don’t feel important and I’m sure everyone else reading your post feels the same way.

Call it a journal if you want. But without comments, it’s not a blog.

By the way, I’m not saying that every post should have open comments. There are exceptions. But 99.9% of your posts should be open for comments, unlike some famous bloggers that make the opposite the rule.

[___] Your blog has multimedia content that plays automatically.

Music, video, whatever. I’ve been over this before. If I’m not in control of when that content plays, then I won’t be back.

I had an incident with a blogger some time back. She had some music video in her sidebar and it launched automatically when I visited her blog for the first time. I left a comment about it and she insisted that I was wrong, that I must have pressed the PLAY button. I didn’t. It could have been my favorite band in the world (it wasn’t) and I still wouldn’t have pressed the PLAY button. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I revisited the blog several times with the same results.

Turns out that she did, indeed, have the autoplay set to OFF, but that it only worked correctly in Microsoft Internet Explorer. In Firefox the video played automatically. She had good intentions but she was wrong. Either test your blog in all browsers or – better yet – don’t embed multimedia in your blog. What are you pimping out music for, anyway? Are you the friggin’ manager or something?

NOTE: I actually break my own rule here by including that Stickam widget in my sidebar. Whenever I turn on my webcam, there’s a live feed right there on the blog’s sidebar, and you can see me sitting at my computer, dancing, whatever. But there IS sound. You can click on the little speaker icon in the upper left of the Stickam window there.

[___] Terrible/Non-existing Navigation.

Let’s say I click on a Permalink so I can read the entire post, and then I click on another post link to read that…and so on and so forth. Suddenly I’m five or six links in and I discover that there’s no way to get back to the front page of your blog, aside from clicking on my browser’s BACK button a half dozen times. I HATE THAT.

The best way to take care of this is to make your banner graphic a hot-link to your front page. (Check the top of 2HT for an example.) Most blogs do this, in fact. Or maybe have a link at the top of your content column that says “Main” or something along those lines. Better still, do both.

Blogs that don’t have decent navigation suck. And don’t get read more than once.

[___] Your posts are more boring than a pencil sharpening contest.

Nine times out of ten, when I read a new blog, I am left wondering what the hell I did to this person that they’re inflicting such pain upon me. Seriously, people, if the sole purpose of your blog is to keep a journal, that’s fine. But even if your life is incredibly boring, must you make your blog boring? Come on, embellish…entertain me. Make something READABLE.

Do you really think that telling me what you had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is meaningful, unless your blog is dedicated to diet and weight loss? Do you really think anyone else cares to read your menu? As Hilly said to me on numerous occasions regarding bad blogs/posts, “Tell me how you FEEL.” Exactly.

Does anybody other than your own family and friends really give a damn about your children? Hell no. And let’s face it – even your friends are feigning interest. But nevertheless, it is possible to make your Mommy blog interesting. Look at Karen for an example. Or Sarah. Or Suburban Turmoil. Ninja Poodles…good stuff. Miss Britt, too. Lots of children-related posts…but interesting, entertaining, readable. It really can be done. And honestly, I wouldn’t call any of these people “mommybloggers.” They’re bloggers who happen to be mommies.

But you say: “It isn’t my job to entertain you, asshole.”

Yes. It. Is.

If you want people to read your drivel, then yeah…it really IS your job. If you’re not looking for readers, or if you only have a blog so you can share it with family, then take down all the Technorati links and the other blog directory links. Quit pinging Pingomatic and trying to bring traffic your way. I mean, if you’re really not out to engage readers, fine. Quit the pimping. And I’ll quit reading.

Think about it. Twenty years from now when you come back and find your old blog/journal you’re going to read it for about five minutes and say, “Damn, I am one boring mofo. What was I thinking, documenting that fluff?” Think about your favorite blogs. Now think about what makes them your favorite blogs. Is it because they’re as boring as sawdust? No. Now, go forth and be more like them.

SIDEBAR VIOLATIONS

Lots of people believe you shouldn’t have more than one sidebar. As you can see, I’m not in agreement with that one. I have much bigger issues with the content in the sidebars. In fact, I could write an entire post about useless sidebar shit. I’d probably get all creative and title it something like “Why I Cannot Stand Your Sidebar(s).”

Aside from cluttered looking sidebars, there are some who take issue with the length of the sidebars. They hate really long sidebars. I don’t know why – it’s not like anybody has to spend any time reading sidebars if they don’t want to. Again, it’s the content that is king.

Here now is a checklist within the checklist. Useless crap for sidebars.

[___] Adopted “pets.”

Cutesy teeny bopper fluff, without the cutesy. I consider this to be one of the millions of novelty sidebar widgets. You see it for the first time and you go “awwww, cool.” You see it a second time and maybe crack a smile. You see it a third time and want to slit your Neopets’ damned throat.

All the virtual “pets” are less intellectually stimulating than pet rocks. Remember, every single thing on your blog adds to your page’s loading time, and that’s important. Especially to the millions and millions of people who aren’t yet blessed with broadband Internet. Every graphic, every piece of Flash, every zippy snippet of Java widgetry…it all increases the amount of time it takes to load your page. And that’s crucial.

I adopted a cute lil’ emo fetus
from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

When it comes to sidebars, people, ask yourselves these questions: “Is this essential? Will I use it most every time I visit my blog? Will Karl make fun of me for having this?” I think you know what you should do. Yes, you must kill the fetus.

[___] Statistics/Counters Overload.

Speaking of statistics, you only need ONE friggin’ counter or stat tracker on your page. I hate when I see a group of 11 stat icons all grouped together. It’s like having 11 penises…you’re just going to make a mess. One is the number, people. The luckiest number (and the loneliest number). If you’re going to have more than one stat counter, make the other ones invisible.

[___] Gobs and gobs of buttons and badges.

Ugh. Why don’t you just get it over with and jab me in the eyes with a spork? Seriously, it’d hurt a lot less. Drives me crazy, seeing a billion badges. 95% of buttons and badges are useless. It’s like the kinderbabes over at Whyspace, who are spending hours each day attempting to accumulate more and more “friends.” More is not better, folks. Stick with what’s essential to you, not with what you think makes you look cool.

I’ve taken the liberty of capturing a few screens from blogs so you can see what I’m talking about.

OK, let’s start with #1. Every button there is utterly worthless. The only redeeming thing about this example is that, for the most part, the buttons are all of the same size so it looks neat and orderly. (Not nearly as neat and orderly as it’d look without the buttons, though.)

#2. Ugh, let’s start with the horrendous background colors. And look how easy it is to read the blue text links. (See what I’m saying about contrast, people?) OK, so they’re in a web ring with a bunch of Oklahoman bloggers. Cool, I can see that being there. All the other crap is, well, crap. Blog directories, blog rankings, blah blah blah.

#3. I really respect people that properly give credit. Here we see them linking to the person that provided a lot of the graphics used on their blog. Cool. That can stay. The “Hot or Not” button? Are you kidding? Blog Mad, Blog Hub, Blogarama…ditch, ditch, ditch. And what is the bloody point with those “I Power Blogger” buttons? Listen, I used to power Typepad. Now I power Wordpress. Who the hell cares? We can look at your blasted URL and tell where your blog is hosted most of the time, thanks. Argh.

It’s like people are hoping to win a prize for Most Shit Crowded Together in The Tiniest Amount of Space. Do us all a favor…pick a few buttons and toss the rest. I’m disappointed, actually. I see far worse examples all the time, where there are literally dozens of buttons/badges on one blog, all different sizes and crowded together haphazardly. I can’t seem to find any really bad examples right now.

You want to see a really GOOD example of button use on a blog? Check out Dave’s Blogography. Look at the buttons here:

Ahhhhh. See that? Every button is the same size and uses the same overall color scheme, making for a nice uniform column. Every button has a purpose, I think. I mean, I don’t know what the flip OTHX is, but knowing Dave it’s really crucial that that button be there. Dave’s site, actually, is really fantastic design all the way around. But hey, that’s the way Dave rolls.

[___] Shout Boxes, Tag Boards, Idiot Boxes, whatever the hell you want to call them.

They suck. Period. There is absolutely no use for them. You want to have a conversation? Turn on your damned IM client. You want to leave a message? That’s what comments are for. Shoutboxes are utter wastes of space and time. And anyone using them is 11 years old or younger. Mentally, anyway.

[___] More than two blog rings.

Blog rings have their place, I suppose. It’s all about increasing traffic to your site and finding likeminded bloggers. But don’t take up a huge chunk of space with 15 blog rings, idiot. Perhaps one person out of a hundred will put their cursor anywhere near blog rings, let alone actually click on them.

You want people to visit you, I get it. One or two blog rings, OK. More than that and your insecurity is being lit up in neon for the whole world to see.

“Please! Come one, come all! Come seeeeeeee me! Look at what I have done here! Pleeeeeeeeeeeease! Leave me lots of comments in my Shout Box!”

Ugh, I’m getting a migraine.

[___] Blogrolls.

The point of having blogrolls, link lists, etc. is to put your bookmarks in a list for other people’s sake. Now that we have feeds (thank God), I find that my blogroll is not something I look at on a regular basis. Really, it’s more about being courteous to those that read your blog. It’s a courtesy thing, reciprocating links, and sharing blogs with other people who are insane enough to add more feeds to their reader.

But a blogroll a mile long in your sidebar? Ugh. Put your blogroll on a separate page or roll those suckers up into a dropdown list or something.

[___] The stupid ecosystem thingie.

You know, the thing that classifies you based on how many mutual links you have or some such crap. It says something like:

I am an Anal Fissure
in the
Oozing Sore Ecosystem

Whatever. Nobody cares. Ditch it.

Right, that’s about all I can think of at the moment. I may edit or update this in the future as I see more things that turn me off blogs. Thoughts? Your own peeves?