Tuesday, September 06, 2011

in what ways does my blog suck?

A friend took me aside on Monday to tell me my blog sucked.

I told him I was more concerned with content than with style.

He responded that he was worried that people might never get to my content, because of the style.

So, it’s time for some reader input. In what ways do you think my blog might suck? Stylistically, what 3 things would you, my long suffering readers change? Content-wise, what should I blog more about? And what should I blog less about?

The comment floor is yours …..

Posted by steve at 11:04 PM

14 Comments

  1. I want to update mine, but the person who set it up vanished before explaining to me how he had done it… can’t for the life of me change anything. I don’t like my own blog! How sad is that? (for what it’s worth, I always come here to read the words, not look at the pretty pictures.)

    Comment by maggi — September 6, 2011 @ 11:07 pm

  2. Black words on a white page … works for me 😉

    Comment by IainM — September 7, 2011 @ 12:15 am

  3. I rarely actually go to blog sites (including this one) as I mostly just use the rss feed.

    Comment by Barb — September 7, 2011 @ 12:27 am

  4. I drop in on your blog regularly, and the style for me has never been an issue. iT’S THE CONTENT AND IT’S QUALITY THAT KEEP DRAWING ME BACK.

    THANK YOU

    Comment by duncan — September 7, 2011 @ 12:34 am

  5. does this blog suck…

    well…

    there’s a number of different types of suckiness

    one is sucking because of crap content, many people blogging for money are filling up the internet with repetitive and fairly useless hyperlinks and content thats mostly repeated elsewhere on another sucky site. this is not your blog, so in this way your blog is not sucky.

    then there’s suckiness made by bad content, different to crap content in so far that instead of repeating other people’s information and blogging for cash these blogs incite anger or hate, or are just full of bulls$%t. you know the type… this isn’t your blog either, so in this way you’re free of sucking.

    and again there’s suckiness due to lack of content, like my blog, I’ve not written since before the wedding, just havent had time or passion (getting back to it soon though) so the blog stagnates and sits there gathering webdust (which is fairly easy to clean, but not that easy to get other visitors back…) and you keep on posting, post move, post new job, post essays and articles…. you just keep on keeping on so your blog fails to suck in this way also.

    moving on there’s suckiness due to design… bad font choices, (actually, the use of the plural there may give something away, never more than two fonts, if you use 5 or 20 fonts in your blog setup then it’s an epic fail). bad design features too, long and disjointed sidebars, difficult navigation features, animated gif files, too many social media widgets… Black text on white background is ok, but it needs to be crisp and nice to read. Unfortunately this is where the blog falls down, which isn’t a big issue, but may not help encourage people to stick around and read more…

    and then there’s a whole pile of petty sucknesses that i wont go into like not including whole posts in rss feeds (which is actually a pain for sites that are difficult to read on due to design flaws) and maybe suckiness in so far as how it integrates with google and other search engines etc… and suckiness due to using blogspot over WordPress or maybe facebook over typepad… but thats another conversation for another time, and possibly says more about my snobiness than anything else 🙂

    Pretty easy to clean it up, if you ever need a hand just holler… but you have people like Craig around adelaide so shouldn’t be a huge issue…

    And that’s only one on four measurements of suck, so that’s not too bad at all…

    Maggi: your site uses WordPress, i can probably answer some questions if you ever have them about how it works and what you can do to make changes, WordPress also has a fairly cool group of geeks around it ever helpful and full of tutorials… (and im sure a helpful student over there in the US would be keen to help out…

    Comment by darren — September 7, 2011 @ 12:36 am

  6. Thanks folk. I’ve passed all your IP addresses onto the style police, who are coming to take you away.

    This is the 21st century. Looks win!! Hip brochures and big names pull the crowds. Tweets sell books.

    back to being serious ….

    steve

    PS Darren – I use wordpress and have since 2004. And if I used Craig, does that mean my blog would look like his!!!!!! 🙂

    now really back to being serious ….

    Comment by steve — September 7, 2011 @ 10:38 am

  7. nahh, yours wouldnt look like craig’s… you dont seem to cook enough goat 🙂

    one of the nice things about WP is you can change style with the wave of a wand and a download of a new theme…

    i guess what you can take away is that noone here seeems to be distracted by your looks, it’s all about personality

    err… i mean the looks of the blog that is…

    😉

    Comment by darren — September 7, 2011 @ 10:58 am

  8. C’mon, if it’s only about content, then the notion of contextualisation is redundant. See my comments as missional advice… err…

    Comment by Tim — September 7, 2011 @ 11:13 am

  9. Could be tricked up a bit ,Steve, but I’m always challenged by the content, which counts for me more. Otherwise, it could be like a double decaf soya cappucino or non-alcoholic wine/beer: why bother! Substance wins everyday, I think.

    Comment by Chris McLeod — September 7, 2011 @ 12:13 pm

  10. No, doesn’t suck. I’m not so concerned about what it looks like but, rather, what Steve puts there. I look at it daily along with a couple of newspapers. Not everything is where I am. Thank goodness for that! But it is stimulating, provocative and worth the read. My mornings would be a bit less if it wasn’t there. In fact I would down right miss it!

    Comment by Bruce Grindlay — September 7, 2011 @ 2:45 pm

  11. I think it’s just fine!

    Comment by Lisa — September 7, 2011 @ 3:15 pm

  12. Content-wise? Absorbing, I can’t stay away.
    Style-wise? For me a narrower text line would help (i.e. less words per line).

    Cheers,

    Comment by Merv — September 7, 2011 @ 7:41 pm

  13. I don’t think it sucks- that is why I keep coming back. Sure, it’s flawed, human and maybe reflects your personal idiosyncracies (I don’t know you but we have spoken on the phone and my car broke down last year so I couldn’t meet you), but hey, that’s blogging and why I like reading (selected) blogs- like yours. It’s why I like blogging; although I haven’t reached your lofty heights!

    Keep on- at least I have discovered new things through your writing and tried new things (even if I don’t ‘get’ the vegetarianism or the kiwi music :)).

    Comment by Graham — September 8, 2011 @ 12:15 am

  14. Well personally I don’t go much on style but then I’m quickly becoming a oldie, so if you need to be picky and go with Darren’s suggestions then go for it I’m sure it will appeal to some, just keep doing what your doing it works for me.

    Comment by Geoff — September 8, 2011 @ 6:18 pm

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