Dew Knight
Doing the Dew, Old School Style
How to make your blog not suck
Author:
Russ - Posted on Wednesday, July 2nd 2008
Here’s a new series for you: How to make your blog not suck.
First up in the series is plugins. You can easily make your blog not suck and your readers not hate you by getting rid of all of those hundreds of plugins, badges, images, etc all in your sidebar and all around your blog. You should have a billion little things making the page really long and slowing down the load time. When you have a lot of junk in there it slows down browsers and just makes people get angry at you. Plus, it makes your blog suck.
Think about what value these plugins and images offer, and weight that against how much people hate you for them.
| 3.6 (2 people) |
Categories
Drop It
8 Responses for "How to make your blog not suck"
I recently found myself reading (reading is a loose term!) blog that had 172 widgets and badges on it. Most of them were so tiny that I considered fetching a magnifying glass to make them out. I wish I could remember where I was, but I suppose it just proves your theory here - so many cause folks to not even get around to doing actual reading.
Hello,
You made me rethink my blogs’ designs because of this post. You’ve discussed something that I have overlooked in the past - stuffing my blog with plugins. Honestly, you’re right. Sometimes my friends and readers complain of so many plugins/widgets loading in my other sites. I might as well clean up my blogs in the next few days. Thanks.
I’m glad some good has come of this post. At first it was a rant after seeing just way too many blogs with too many plugins earlier today, but this is something I could really work on and make it worthwhile. Look for more of these in the future! And thanks for commenting.
Ya know, it’s about time somebody said it. There are so many blogs out there that don’t even get read because they take like 2 minutes to load. I’m all for a page that looks good, but when it comes to a neat page that loads really slow, or a plain page with tons of great info, I’ll take the plain page every time. Get rid of all the crap people!
I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ran across a blog that was THAT bad. I’m sure they are out there though.
Amen to that! I think I’ve done a good job of simplifying my sidebars and down to running only a few necessary plug-ins like askimet & comment luv, just because it’s fun
It’s just amazing how many blogs do this. You would think the owners maybe visit their own blog every so often and see how annoyingly slow it is. Just pure fail.
Hey Russ:
And to add to this - cut the music crap! Gee whiz… here I am, at work, trying to drop a few cards between stuff I have to do and I end up on a blog that not only has one million widgets and things all over the place, but the entrecard widget is somewhere in the middle of all that detritus and before I know it - a blast of some sappy, godawful music assaults my ears and makes my cube mates sit up and take notice, gopher-style.
UGH. Yes, those are the blogs that definitely DO suck. I think a few sidebar items are fine, but the ones that slow down the process of card-dropping, let alone READING the post(s), and then offend you with their questionable choices in music that you didn’t ask to listen to - well, I’m outta there!
Thanks for this post, Russ - keep up the rants.
~Laura
Leave a reply