Tech Tuesday: What I Hate About Your Blog

So it looks like Tech Tuesdays are working out to be more of a monthly thing. Forgive me, I just haven't been messing around much with technology and my blog. But please, email me any questions you'd like me to look into, or leave a comment here.

For this post, I wanted to tackle some things that drive me nuts about blogs. While that may seem crass and haughty, I'm probably not the only one who has these issues. Beyond playing music on one's blog (which is a very common complaint), here's a list of things that often bother other bloggers.

1. Simplify: Blogs that have too many widgets and gadgets. It's not the cluttered look that bothers me necessarily, but it's that those blogs take FOREVER to load when you have your Good Reads bookshelf, advertisements, Forum widgets, etc. etc.

2. Break it Up: You have very long posts with no images in them, or at least spaces between paragraphs. These huge chunks of text intimidate me. I need some breathing room between thoughts! Consider adding some clip art or a photo to make the post more dynamic.

3. Bye Bye Log-Ins: Logging in to leave comments--Ugh. Now I understand Captcha-type things (those weird security words you have to enter), since I've been dealing with comment spam and have had to enable word verification. But services like Disqus irk me because I have to log in to leave a comment, and for some reason that particular service doesn't save my login info.

4. Seizure-inducing buttons: These flashing buttons irritate my irises and make me feel like I'm going to come down with Mary Hart Syndrome. In moderation, they're ok, but when you have animated gifs all over the place, I tend to click away to save my vision.

5. Lost in no-reply land: I like to respond to comments, but I hate when I type up a perfectly-written email response, only to hit send and see it go to "no-reply-comment@blogger.com". Please leave your email or have it linked to your profile (or even on your blog, preferably on the front page).

6. Extra clicking: While this might not bother some people, I hate having to click a link to read an entire post. Like reading a paragraph, then clicking "Read More" to continue. I prefer the whole post in one page, more like a journal. While I get that you want to increase the click-count of your blog, this has often made me click AWAY from your blog instead.

7. Hard to read text: My training in college as an editor/copywriter taught me a very important lesson: make your text easily-readable. Black text on a light background is much easier to read than white text on a black background. As for fonts, serif ones (that have little "tags" on the ends) like Times New Roman are much easier to read than san-serif ones (like Ariel). Though as you can see on my blog, the design-obsession got the best of me and I chose a san-serif font for my posts.

When it comes to text, simplify. Also, I personally don't like blog posts that are entirely centered. To me, it reads like it's trying to be poetry and can be distracting.

While I admit that I'm a super-sensitive person (example, I hate when my socks get all out of line inside my shoes), I'm sure there are things that bother you about blogs (including mine...I can take it). Please share!!