This post contains 11 of my pet peeves that guarantee a blogger will lose me as a reader, and it also invites my readers to discuss their pet peeves.
(1) Banner advertising
I come to blogs to read high quality blog content and I expect to find that content above the fold. If you have banner advertising you are compelling me to scroll down to find the actual content in your blog posts.
The message is that your advertisers and any income you gain from clicks on the banner is more important to you than readers are.
(2) Too much advertising everywhere
An excessive amount of advertisements above your posts , between your post titles and the text in the post, at the end of the posts and in your sidebars increases page loading time, makes it difficult to find the actual content, and distracts me from away from reading the content found in your blog posts.
The message is that your advertisers and any income you gain from clicks on the advertising is more important to you than readers are.
(3) Too many embeds, widgets and gadgets
An abundance of animated icons, embeds, widgets, gadgets and other useless “tat” like annoying auto-play music, chat boxes etc. on the front page and in the sidebar increases page loading time, makes it difficult to find the actual content, and distracts me from away from reading the content in your blog posts. If a blog that is not in the music blog niche has auto-play music that I do not have a choice of clicking on to hear or not – it’s the kiss of death.
The message is that you are not a serious blogger who has put their readers first. Your blog is your own personal playground and it’s perfectly equipped for you.
Why having a well designed blog is important
Widgets: less is more
(4) Broken links, links to “bad neighbors”, links to unrelated sites
Nothing is more annoying than clicking on a “404″ (not found) link. Although broken links checkers are available the message is that either the blogger isn’t aware of where to find a broken links checker or just doesn’t care enough about their readers’ experience to locate them and fix them or delete them.
If you have linked to “bad neighborhood” sites this tells me that you either don’t know how much about which sites to avoid linking to. Either the blogger is not aware that there is a bad neighborhood checker or doesn’t care that their blog is linked to drug peddling, prono, casino or link farm sites.
Links in your blogroll are made accessible for reader use. They signify the relationship between “related” blogs. If a blogroll contains many links to unrelated sites, then I question whether or not that blogger clearly understands what linking is all about.
Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inbound link and outbound link ratios as well as link quality when determining how natural a site’s link profile is.
Understanding Backlinks
Understanding Reciprocal and Non-Reciprocal Links
SEO Basics for on Page Optimization
Getting the perfect link
(5) Inappropriate use of anchor text “click here”
I will grind my teeth and try to find a way to teach you how to use anchor text properly and if you don’t respond then you will lose me as a reader.
(6) No About page and/or blog description and/or contact information
Personal profiles are a cross-section of your life intended to will intrigue readers and make them want to find out more about you and your blog.
A blog description is a brief description highlighting through the use of keywords the main topics that you write about. Space permitting you may want to outline what you hope your readers will learn or gain from reading your blog. Search engines show up only 160 characters in the search results, so it would be better to keep your blog description under 160 chars.
Contact information is essential to readers who want to ask questions and share feedback that is not post-specific.
I find it hard to believe that a serious blogger who is attempting to promote their blog would fail to take the opportunity to provide basic information. A brief introductory biography, a blog description, a statement that clarifies the purpose(s) for the blog are the means readers use to determine what your level of expertise in your niche is, is and what to expect in your posts. If you fail to provide this basic information you will lose me as a reader.
(7) Busy, loud or black backgrounds
I’m visually challenged. Dark backgrounds, busy photo or fabric like backgrounds with fonts that lack enough contrast to be easily read are not reader friendly cause your content to become difficult to find and to read. Loud neon colored fonts are likewise visually challenging.
Blog Design: Which colors do you use and why?
Blog Colors on Different Browsers and Monitors
(8) Rant skillfully with style and integrity or not at all
A talented wordsmith can use language in effective ways to point out shortcomings and to put forward convincing alternatives. Blogs filled with posts and comments that are not linked to authoritative sources and are focused on impugning the character of others such as politicians, business leaders and fellow bloggers by featuring rants filled with cursing, bathroom humor and/or sexual humor and/or sexual innuendo appeal to some readers – I am not among them.
(9) Bloggers who pretend they are journalists
Although an increasing number of journalists and media outlets do have blogs, most bloggers publishing on current events are not journalists. Bloggers who have no first hand knowledge of the events they blog about, and who make no attempt to research topics as fully as possible prior to writing and publishing, and who do not include authoritative links so their sources, and/or who do not employ valid reasoning, will lose me as a reader.
How to Become a Better Blogger 3: Ethics and Links
(10) Too much “insider lingo” in posts and/or comments
The use of insider lingo or jargon assumes that I have been a reader of a particular blog in a particular niche forever and that I “get” all of your inside jargon and humor when I don’t. As you have failed to make your content and discussion welcoming and inclusive you will lose me as a reader.
(11) Too many personal inclusions
Too many injections of personal information and family goings on posted into blogs that are not in the “personal” niche means you will lose me as a reader.
Related blog post: onecoolsite: tips from a reader
Question to readers:
Do you have pet peeves that you would like to add ?
cooper
May 31, 2009
If only people would do some of those things…
I am sometimes guilty of the 10th one.
I think because I do have readers from a long time ago when I was at blogspot, and there is a running commentary on certain subjects, I once in awhile refer to things that people would have to have read be all along to understand. That is the hazard of the personal /commentary type blog where it is not time efficient to actually explain some of the things in the postings which go too far back to be understood by a lot of people. I don’t do it that often but find it hard not to do it when the mood for a certain post strikes me.
timethief
June 1, 2009
@cooper
Every niche has it’s own jargon. What’s important is for bloggers to become aware that new readers may not be conversant with it. Keeping that in mind, creating an anchor text link in a current post to an earlier one that has a definition of the jargon being used can solve this problem.
roentarre
May 31, 2009
A good post, TT. The tips do help me to examine my own blogs again and make some appropriate changes again.
I like the fact that I am bringing more widgets down slowly over time. Now I feel confident that widgets do not bring visitors to read my blogs. It is how I invite readers to come :)
timethief
June 1, 2009
@roentarre
Widgets don’t only spoil the blog design and give the blog an amateurish appearance, but they also compromise blog speed (page loading time), in short viewers have to wait for widgets to load before they can interact with your blog. This may not seem important to bloggers on high speed broadband service but most people surfing the web today are on dial-up service.
Widgets also distract readers away from read blog content.
Every widget is a backlink to the site from whence it came. Some search spiders stop indexing when they get to link number 100 or so on your front page. Unless we are vigilant we can clutter a sidebar with widgets (outbound links) that are not balanced by the number of inbound links our blogs are receiving.
If a widget does not provide access to additional resources to the reader thereby enhancing their reading experience then my advice is — don’t add it.
ibgeronimo
May 31, 2009
Bloggers who hijack profitable keywords and write post after post about them make me cringe. This blogger is clearly not writing with me in mind. I am out of there. An occasional paid post is a tad worrisome for me. Can’t force me to read that even if we’re online buddies. I’ll just wait when you’re done writing posts to pay your bills.
In books, nothing fazes me. I can read long blocks of texts for hours and be none the worse for it. But blogs? I would love to see nicely formatted posts for easy reading. Long blocks of text in blogs drive me away. Well, maybe if you’re Mark Twain, I’d suffer in silence then.
Well-thought out list. Love it.
timethief
June 1, 2009
@ibgeronimo
I share your aversion to blogs wherein the blogger is writing post after post laden with highly paid keywords. I also share your conclusion that they aren’t writing with readers in mind.
I’m also in agreement with what you say about formatting. Large blocks of text that contain no formatting and consequently no white space create no rest for the eyes of the reader and no time to consider what they have read. As a visually challenged person I simply refuse to even try to read blogs that are presented to me in this manner.
Bird
June 1, 2009
I often worry that I am guilty of 3… there is a lot of stuff on my sidebar and I’m always trying to think of ways to neaten it up. I agree that music which auto loads is horrible – taste is so personal and while the writer might love the music and think it fits with the blog, there is no way I’m going to submit myself to what I think is horrible music no matter how great the other content. I think I’ve found one blog with music embedded where the music added to my enjoyment…and I bet that same music had others running and screaming! Those autoplay widgets were all over blogs like a rash at one point, thank goodness there are not so many any more.
I was wondering what your opinion would be about content which promotes a service or product that the blogger is providing? Ninety nine percent of my blog is about nature, about half a percent currently about my crafting and there is an occasional post where I actively promote my work. I don’t hide the fact that I make things to sell but I don’t want to alienate people who just want to read about nature or gardening or look at the pictures. Sometimes it’s hard to get a sensitive balance, and posts like this act as excellent reminders of good blogging practice. Thank you… and now I think I’ll go and see to that sidebar…
timethief
June 1, 2009
@Bird
IMO your selling things is not problematic. Here’s the reality. You have a very long blogroll divided into sections. Some search spiders stop indexing when they get to link number 100 or so on your front page. So unless you are vigilant the number of outbound links may exceed the number of inbound links to your blog causing a lowering of PageRank. Your stats program will tell you which of those blogroll links your readers are actually clicking on. The ones that aren’t being clicked are the ones you may want to consider removing.
Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inbound link and outbound link ratios as well as link quality when determining how natural a site’s link profile is.
If your site has a lot of reciprocal (two-way links), especially if they are not related then the search engines will assume that these are solicited links, and search engines do not give much importance to such two-way or reciprocal links, and in some cases may even penalize your site. Consequently, I no longer do link exchanges with sites that are not directly related to my own sites.
Otherwise your blog looks swell.
Bird
June 2, 2009
Thank you! I’ve removed quite a few links from my sidebars as a result of this advice and changed a few other things too – looks much cleaner now and I think the links I’ve kept all make sense. I hope this isn’t getting too off topic – but I was wondering if the links that the spiders stop counting when they get to 100 is ALL the links on the page, or just the outbound ones? Because I’m in trouble if it’s all of them, my home page is link heavy in it’s design!
timethief
June 2, 2009
All of them.
irtiza104
June 1, 2009
I am glad that i reduced the number of widgets in my blog. BTW, i also hate auto play music. they are really annoying.
timethief
June 1, 2009
@iritza
Your blog is looking so fine, and you have come so far in your blogging that you make me smile. :)
irtiza104
June 4, 2009
:D
Nothing profound
June 1, 2009
My blog is the Plain Jane blog of all time. No frills, no ads, no ostentatious displays of any kind-just the plain words on the page. For me, what I like or don’t like has mainly to do with tone and content. It’s a matter of taste. Most of the things you mention would interfere with my concentration and pleasure in the text. But if the person has something interesting to say, I’ll overlook deficiencies in style and layout and zoom in on what I like.
Let me add number 8 is also a big turn off for me. Rants in general don’t appeal to me, and flagrant mockery and disrespect only make them worse.
timethief
June 1, 2009
@nothing profound
Indeed your site is very plain and common theme that lacks any clutter. I minute one clicks in they are viewing content and IMO that’s a good thing. I also view blogs with deficiencies and choose not to nag bloggers about them. However I am visually challenged so if I have any difficulty reading and I like the content then I subscribe to the RSS feed. That way I get the posts on a white background with black text and I can read them with ease.
I’m glad to hear that you share my version to blogs described in #8. :)
earthtoholly
June 1, 2009
Hi TT,
Excellent post and a good guideline for us all.
I am guilty of #6, specifically the blasted About page. After almost a year I am just about finished with it and have turned it into a post. And believe me, it’s not that exciting so I don’t know exactly what my problem was there.
I think you’ve covered all of my peeves, including the auto-play, which is probably at the top of my list. And #8…I think I’ve run into a few of those to which I’ve never returned.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@earthtoholly
Hello there and thanks for your comment. I’ll be looking for that About psge/post on my next visit … lol :D
alone
June 1, 2009
I’d done some of the mistakes and yeah.. all the points given will make us lose the readers.
Btw, I always believe that content is the king. No unique and interesting content, no loyal readers.
Some of the mistakes are irreversible. It’s ok for me as blogging is a platform for me to enjoy myself =)
timethief
June 2, 2009
@alone
Indeed content is king and if it’s obscured by all kinds of “tat” (unnecessary and distracting stuff) then the blogger isn’t presenting it well and can lose readers. That’s why the focus of the better blogger is on improving the readers’ experience of the blog.
Teresa Silverthorn
June 1, 2009
I don’t think the people who do this for money really understand what they’re doing – in order to get it, sometimes.
I’ve noticed that they help each other out, tho, by clicking on each others ads.
One person left me a shout at blogcatalog, telling me they ki$$ed my ads, and asked me to do the same.
I don’t have any ads ;)
timethief
June 2, 2009
@Teresa
Yes, click fraud types are dull of wit and extremely annoying. These days the blogoshpere seems to be crawling with ebeggars calling themselves “blogger” when they aren’t.
Word Bandit
June 1, 2009
Excellent entry. I agree, and try to avoid these mistakes.
I’ve found that every so often I have to go through and update YouTube links, unfortunately.
Not stable.
Thanks for the great tips, which I enjoy receiving — you have prompted to revamp my about page this week, as I think I’ve made it a tad bit too brief.
Ohhhhhhhh, and I would add to this list that too many links on a link page are just that, too many.’
It’s all about choices, like all of life.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@wordbandit
Thanks for the reminder about broken youtube link checks. I’m glad to here you are going to revamp your profile page. The process of thinking things through and crafting a profile and blog description is valuable to the blogger. The end product is valuable to readers and can be used in profile and blog descriptions in social networks. re: too many links – agreed
Thanks for commenting.
ian in hamburg
June 1, 2009
I like my coal grey/black background because it highlights photos so well. A white background doesn’t do it for them nearly as much. Sorry to have lost you as a reader, TT…
timethief
June 2, 2009
@ian
Your black background displays photos very well. But, more to the point for us visually impaired types, the contrast between the color of the font and background makes it easy to read. If the font was gray as I frequently experience in other blogs I would have a lot of trouble struggling to read the text. Also note that as you have a wordpress.com blog I’m a subscriber. Your blog is on my blog surfer so I read all your posts in black font on a white background. :)
ian in hamburg
June 2, 2009
Ah, cool – that’s good to know.
Kiefer
June 1, 2009
Thanks for the info Timethief,
For the most part I write all my post from my own personal experiences and I always do my research before writing a post to verify that everything I say is correct.
When I first started my blog most people told me that it sounded more like an infomercial since I only stated the feature and showed the benefit. Now I try to put a little more fluff around the good stuff to make it more personal.
I personally like to read things that offer straightforward information without a lot of personnel filler involved and my post probably reflect this.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@kieferscorner
I don’t expect to be reading eloquent language and a lot of superfluous filler when I read posts in fitness and health blogs. I like your posts because they are bare bones and that’s a very suitable style of writing for your blogging niche. :)
SBA
June 1, 2009
Everyone has a different ‘pet peeve’. It’s nice to see your list with some (appropriately anchored) links to helpful reading. I would hope that just one transgression does not make you drop a blog with excellent content — knowing you, you’d shoot off a note of advice to the author ( though they need contact info for that!). I guess I’d try to look past the ads or use ad blocker to get good content. Many folks have trained themselves to scroll automatically — you have to do it everywhere: in your email provider windows, at social networking sites (BlogCatalog)… it’s endless. I’ve become conditioned, unfortunately.
With the exception of new blogs gone completely mad with ads, I react most to the ‘no contact’ shortcoming, #6. Many blogs on free platforms using templates without a menu have useless or no contact info. It’s frustrating to go to a Blogger profile and find no email, just the blog url from which you just came! So it’s the blog owner who misses out on the feedback.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@SBA
I use a Firefox browser with AdBlock Plus. That’s how strongly I feel about not seeing advertising and I’m not alone. Browser stats show that 47.1% of those browsing the web are using a Firefox browser. If a blog that does have advertising on it truly interests me then I subscribe to the RSS feed and solve my problem. However, that means I don’t visit the blog or leave comments very often.
Feedback is vital to bloggers. Together bloggers and readers create the blog’s brand and failing to provide contact information is a huge mistake. It also diminishes the credibility of the blog “no contact information” is characteristic of splogs full of stolen content.
Thanks so much for drawing those points out.
Garg Unzola
June 1, 2009
Ooh, I was about to include a banner. I recently removed my Entrecard widget to make more space on my blog, but I agree – anything that gets in the way of content on your blog is bad. [rant]This includes toolbars, of course[/rant].
timethief
June 2, 2009
@Garg
I hate iframes! Pffooeeeey to toolbars. ;)
LLnL
June 1, 2009
I am a new blogger and this post is a wonderful resource. I suspect that I do lose readers from my inexperience and I feel grateful for the opportunity to learn from mistakes. I just invited you to read a post of mine but it is very personal and I’m not sure if that is offensive to you. I learning to ask for what I want but have not yet mastered how to pair that with tact so please excuse my pestering.
I will bookmark this article so I can remember take time to study and use the relevant and interesting links later : ) See I’m learning already. Thank you!
timethief
June 2, 2009
@LLnL
I’ve been to your blog and commented. Best wishes.
Bunny
June 1, 2009
And in what parallel dimension is bright green not a loud colour for a background. I have no problem with black and dark grey backgrounds, but I do have a problem with “Eye bleed Green”.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@Bunny
I think I know the color you mean. If so then I don’t like it either. The point being that a background should be just that – in the background – it shouldn’t jumping out at the reader.
The point I was making in the post is the lack of contrast between the background and font color one. At one end of the scale patterned backgrounds can create the optical illusion of movement. At the other they can present a minor distraction.
In all cases, it’s the content that should be front and center.
alantru
June 1, 2009
Wonderful post.
No. 8 I keep all my posts profane free. However, the comment threads can get risqué. But it’s all in the spirit of fun and nothing mean-spirited or disparaging gets said. Ever. That said, I can understand how some people wouldn’t find it funny. Humour, like all art, is subjective.
timethief
June 2, 2009
@alantru
There are situations were profane words fit perfectly but blogs that contain nothing but rambling, strings of obscenities cobbled into poorly written rants aren’t worthy of my notice. Yours, on the other hand, is a cool blog that I enjoy.
akoehn
June 1, 2009
I don’t know. I’m getting somewhat jaded to the whole blog thing. Most seem to be a way to try to generate clicks…or get like $.05 out of an advertiser (I don’t have a clue what people make from those ads…) and others are little more than “reblog’s.”
YOUR blog happens to be great. Apparently you take your own advice. That’s not always easy to do.
For me…it’s the advertising…and the fact that too many of us are blogging our “ramblings.” I think I’m due for a little checkup…
Thanks!
timethief
June 2, 2009
@akoehn
Your blog is unique and very well written. You are a master of brevity who conveys wisdom the way a sumei brush painter creates a flower using as few brushstrokes as possible.
Judith HeartSong
June 2, 2009
hmmm… I agree with most of this…. and I left AOL journals because of banner ads. I do have a black background as it is the best way to showcase my art…… sorry TT:)
timethief
June 2, 2009
@Judith
I have no trouble at all reading your blog. The font color has enough contrast with the black background for me to read with ease. :)
Garg Unzola
June 2, 2009
My posts contain some mild profanity and scatology from time to time. My rants are just vents really. They’re good for traffic and great for my soul, but understandably not everyone’s cup of tea.
What is also good for traffic is to incorporate a current affair in a sly way. It won’t help to pick swine flu, because your ranking for swine flu would be very low (unless you have that sort of blog), but keep an eye out on the most popular twitter tags, the most read news articles on your favourite news syndicate, that sort of thing.
You should never, ever use ‘click here’ as your anchor text. It is very bad for SEO and it is poor user interface design. Your anchor text should be like keywords giving you an idea of where the link goes. This is good for your readers, because they know what to expect, and it is also good for your SEO because your inward and outward links contribute to your page ranking.
timethief
June 3, 2009
@Garg
lol … Your rants are “intellectual” rants backed eith substance. In other words, you rant skillfully and with great style. The kind I’m referring to are the trash.
Also, if you are going to start lecturing my readers about anchor text and SEO then I’m going to draft you into service as a guest author but on another subject as I’ve already covered that one. … lol … ;)
Aswani
June 2, 2009
Must read post for every blogger. I think I have to rethink on some of the important aspects of my blog after reading your post. It really makes difference in the end. Thank you again for this excellent post :)
timethief
June 3, 2009
@Aswani
Thanks for letting me know you found value in the post.
Summer
June 2, 2009
Sorry, this isn’t related to this post, I’m researching a problem and came across answers from you several times but wasn’t able to make it work. I was hoping you could offer another suggestion. I’m trying to copy my blog posts into word and you gave a good suggestion of subscribing to your own feed so I followed the instructions but can’t get it to work with a private blog. It looks like it’s possible with html authorizations but try as I might, I can’t figure it out. Any suggestions? Thanks so much for your time.
timethief
June 3, 2009
@Summer
Private blogs at wordpress.com do not have RSS feeds. If you have a wordpress.com blog then feedblitz has an option http://blog.feedblitz.com/2008/08/new-feature-newsletters-from-protected.html
I do not recommend using microsoft WORD. This FAQs post explains why that is http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/why-not-to-use-word/
Nita
June 3, 2009
Great post! You have articulated every single peeve of mine! In particular I do not like blogs which are self-centred, rant and rave about their hatred or disagreements with others and those blogs which pretend to be something but aren’t!
timethief
June 3, 2009
@Nita
Unfortunately the kind of blogs we both loathe are growing in number everyday. One fathead had the audacity to launch a character assassination post that clearly contained grounds for a defamation suit. I screen-grabbed the original. He then changed the title, and deleted both the defamatory contents and defamatory comments, and then closed the comments. I have it on hand as supportive evidence for the next time he flaps his yap.
yourfinditnews
June 3, 2009
Your blog is my official “go to” site for everything that has to do with running a blog.
There’s so much good stuff to read about.
timethief
June 3, 2009
Thank you.
Vikas Gupta
June 5, 2009
Very insightful! BTW I have overcome my love of widgets and will even reduce posts on home page like yours and add an all posts page like you!
P.S.: Sorry about your dog!
Dee
June 10, 2009
Timethief I have benefited tremendously from your informative posts and discussions here and at BC.
I have sought to reduce my widgets significantly – we do tend to get carried away – and am still working on my color scheme.
What is your view on comment luv? I see where blogger blogs can now install this tool.
Hicham
June 12, 2009
timetheif, you’ve almost listed my pet peeves except one; those who preach they are the only right and all others are simply wrong because they don’t share the author the same opinion. In a nutshell, the narrow-minded bloggers regardless what they believe in.
On the other hand, I also don’t like the pure advertising blogs but there are some bloggers -like me- who place non-paid advertising links as they are related to the niche of blogging.
Lydia
July 24, 2009
This is a great post- sorely needed to remind us not to follow everything the big boys say are “must” inclusions on our blogs. BTW I agree, auto play music is probably up there for me as the biggest pet peeve.
Lu
November 29, 2009
You are so helpful! I just began to follow you on twitter, and really appreciate you answering my question that I posted in the forum (you’re the only one that did which shows me you really are a teacher of how to blog!)
Your blog is fantastic….a winning lottery ticket for people who have no clue how to start!
I will be reading your posts and if it’s okay with you, can I list you on my blog as a treasure for newbies—so much information, and well written.
You are awesome!
Thanks!
Lu
creativewritingbylu’s blog
timethief
November 30, 2009
Hi Lu,
I’m glad you found the information I provided to be helpful. Thanks so much for the kind words about my blogging and my eccentric habit of teaching every blogger I meet online everything I know about blogging as soon as I learn it, whether they want to learn it or not – lol :D
I would be both proud and delighted if you chose to post a link to my blog on your site.
P.S. What’s your twitter “handle”?
phoxis
November 30, 2009
Another thing which is important to me is the organization of the contents, tagging. If the blog does not have any categories or tags or have inappropriate tags, then it is very difficult to find out the content which i want, or if i want to browse other contents from that blog as well.
Another problem which i face in my blog is the digg buttons. Most of the time the home page takes to load huge time, and diagnosing the time breakdown with Firebug (FF plugin) shows that all of the time (almost) is takes by the digg buttons to load, and i am stuck with this problem. One work around is to remove them, or just place a plane “Digg This” button which will not require to contack digg servers.
timethief
November 30, 2009
When it comes to categories and tags we are most certainly in agreement. You can have the best contents in the blogosphere, but if they can’t be found then who will ever know? Unless we learn and use basic SEO and use categories and tags, we cannot expect search engines to index our posts and make them available in the SERPS (search engine page results).
You do not have to use the Digg button provided by wordpress.com. Any Digg image linked to the correct spot for submissions can be used. Here are the specs http://digg.com/tools/integrate. Perhaps making your own and seeing it it loads faster is the way to go. If it doesn’t you can always remove it and revert to the wordpress.com one.
Another alternative is to use the getsocial live bookmarks or social bookmark builder or social bookmarks on wordpress.com. I have used them all and they do not slow down page loading time.
urcquilter
February 25, 2010
I don’t have any pet peeves beyond those you’ve written about. Why anyone would use the busy/black backgrounds is beyond my comprehension. I can only assume they aren’t irksome to everyone, though this is difficult to imagine.
I’m a newbie and appreciate your blogs. I’m currently trying to better understand categories. I’ve somehow managed to create a page when I meant for it to be a post. Once I figure out how to fix that, and understand how the categories are meant to function, I should be fine. I’ll keep reading and playing around with things, until I get it figured out.
I mostly wanted to just say thank you, so … thank you.
timethief
February 25, 2010
Hello there,
There are actually many people who do have blogs with dark and/or busy backgrounds. The darkness of the background isn’t problematic if the font color is light enough but in many cases it’s a low contrast gray color. Busy and/or loud backgrounds simply distract readers away from reading the content. Thanks so much for the feedback on this post, and also for your kind words. I hope you find the articles in this blog to be useful.
Pages and posts are different.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/
Posts http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/
Pages http://en.support.wordpress.com/tag/pages/
absurdoldbird
August 1, 2010
I’ve been blogging since 2004 and had never, til now, heard about broken-link checkers! I’m relieved to discover I don’t have any. (Did have a few days ago though – all my images broke, what a headache!)
I also dislike dark backgrounds and a pet hate of mine is yellow font colours against a pale background or red against blue, etc. It’s too jarring.
There’s a blog I read quite regularly that has, imo, too much advertising, but I’ve come to enjoy the posts of the blog author and so I just put up with it. However, I do tend to use the ‘page info’ in Firefox Tools to block the ads and embeds that I find the most annoying.
Actually the thing that I find most annoying is something that is done in blogs all over the ‘net and that’s having the panel at the right and the content on the left. Why? Because stuff on the left is processed by the right hemisphere of the brain and stuff on the right is processed by the left hemisphere. So, for blogs that have imagery or imaginative stuff on the left and text or logical/rational stuff on the right – it’s being processed wrongly. (Plenty has been written about it and there’s plenty of info about it online).
Val
timethief
August 1, 2010
@Val
Wow! I once had to fix broken links on 700 entries with images. It was misery.
Our pert peeves are the same. What I do is subscribe so I get the entries on my feed reader. I also use Firefox with AdBlock Plus so I don’t see any advertising.
I’m on vacation right now and don’t have the links close at hand, but there are studies that demonstrate the vast and overwhelming majority of surfers read web pages in a an F shape.
This theme allows me to switch the sidebar to the left hand side but I prefer not to.
absurdoldbird
August 2, 2010
700 broken images? Ouch!!
I also read blogs in a feed reader, but not all bloggers allow the full post to show in the reader. (Come to that, I think my image heavy second blog is set to this as well, so I’m just as guilty of it.)
Hadn’t heard of the ‘F shape’ reading.
timethief
August 2, 2010
700! Yikes! I inadvertently lied. I made a typo that should have been 70 (seventy) and it was tortuous enough. I have my feeds set on summary to thwart the content thieves who keep helping themselves to my posts. Some blogs I subscribe to have summaries and some are full posts. I can usually tell by skimming the first two paragraphs whether or not I’m interested enough to settle back and read the full post. If that’s the case then I click into the blog. :)
Syed Abdul Wahab Gilani
August 19, 2010
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Warm Regards,
awGilani
readytochangenow
January 7, 2012
I have tried to break my widget addiction and just focus on those that try to help the reader find the information they are looking for – I still add and take away trying to find a balance.
My pet peeve is no white space. If I land on a post that is two solid paragraphs with no breaks and is so long I have to scroll I usually bounce.
timethief
January 7, 2012
I also bounce right out and don’t return when I experience large blocks of text unbrokwn by any white space that provides rest for the eyes. Have your read the follow-up post? http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/08/18/minimalist-blogging-strip-it/