My Life With IT

I read blogs everyday (I try to) but the massive number of blogs I have added to my blogroll gets in the way of spending time reading all of them. I have since resorted to Bloglines. While Bloglines is able to auto-refresh the updated feeds, it is unable to display videos that have been embedded. I’m fine with that. Since I hate the downloading time for videos.

Blog design is important because it is too cluttered with Adsense, Nuffnang, and all those monetizing ads, I won’t be able to read the actual post despite its quality. I wouldn’t be able to find its RSS either. Not that it’s difficult, just put the URL in Bloglines and the job is done. While it is debatable with full vs. partial feeds, blog designs are important to keep the readers coming again and again to your blog. The comments section must be easy to find and as Lorelle has put some more tips on how to make your blog more readable.

I especially love the following tips:

• Blog Title: A consistent blog title on every page of your blog reminds the visitor where they are and what your blog is about.
• Home Link: Help the reader find the front page of your blog easily. Designers often make the blog title and/or header art or logo clickable to the blog’s front page.
• Search Form: The gateway to finding information on your blog from any page.

I like to click on the blog title to get to the front page. However, Blogger does not provide that and I’ve been unable to change the template much except to add Google Analytics to it so far. The brief comparison was not enough to cover the difference between Wordpress and Blogger but a quick search in Google should result in something more.

Now, back to making a blog elements better, I have seen blogs that require scrolling horizontally, oh the horrors. I got out of the first page fast. Some required resizing of the window. Others had tiny iframes, especially in Blogspot blogs and it’s worst when the post is long with the small frame. I never got to finish reading despite the interesting start.

I especially get turned off by my cursor turned into a cross-hair and the background is black, so is my cursor. How to navigate? Other times, the mouse does not change to a hand to show that it is a link, it remains as an arrow and only when I attempt to click on the word that seems to be a link, the iframe changes.

I know the templates and images are nice but they do take too long to load and the music, gosh, please take it out. This has turn out to be a rant instead so I shall stop here.