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Good Blog Design
Jun. 24th, 2006 08:58 pmYesterday I was reading some stuff on good web coding, which lead to stuff on good web design, which led to stuff on good home page and even blog design.
The article on good blog design said that you should have an "about me" page just like businesses need an "about us" page. You're supposed to mention the purpose of your blog, for example, so if a person came upon your blog because of an entry on horse racing, he could learn if it was a whole blog on horse racing or just a rare entry on the subject. The article also said people like to see a picture of the person to get a handle on their identity. I don't think a cast-of-characters page was mentioned, but I've thought that was a good idea when I've seen it before.
It was also recommended that you update regularly, ideally daily, but weekly or even monthly updates could also work.
As you guys can see, I do not follow any of these suggestions except the daily updating, and I wasn't doing that at first either.
My info page has nothing but my city, state and zip code (I'm surprised I even put that), that my name is "livingdeb," and that my birthday is January.
The article did mention that if the blog is only for friends and family, you don't need to follow these rules, but otherwise you should.
In fact, I am writing this mostly for friends and family, and I don't make it easy for strangers to find. On the other hand, when I look at the list of people who have "friended me" on LiveJournal, there are 13 people. Five are good friends. Two are other friends who I don't know very well at this time. One is an online journallor I met through an online, uh, conversation group(?) who encouraged me to start my own journal. One is his best friend and two or three are other readers of his. One is someone I found on LiveJournal. So basically half are friends and half are the audience this writer is talking about.
I'm not sure whether I like the suggestions this author makes (although I do agree with his suggestions in his other articles). I do sometimes like seeing where someone is coming from. For example, Frugal Homemaker Plus explains, "I am a homemaker trying to be as frugal as possible without compromising quality of living. We have some student debt to pay off. Our goal is to be entirely debt free in five years or less, without me having to work full time outside the home." I like that.
However, I mostly read blogs without themes. And anything they could say would probably be mostly demographics, which I find distracting. I'd really rather just go around imagining that they are basically just like me until something in the story says otherwise. I've had fun discovering that people are different genders, different races, different ages, different sizes, having different sexual orientations, living in different states and countries, and having very odd jobs.
But I'd rather not see that first. I'd rather judge someone by their writing first. Sure, I'm going to unfairly eliminate people with bad writing. But if their writing is bad, and I'm learning about them via their writing, I don't mind losing out so much. On the other hand, if there's some hulking hairy guy I might not identify with in real life but who's a good writer, I'd rather not eliminate that guy.
And I also leave out this kind of stuff out of a paranoia about stalkers and such. A careful reader can figure out where I live, where I work, where to find me, but I don't make it easy for a casual reader.
The article recommends that you don't write anything you don't want a hiring manager reading in ten years. Are people googling my name or looking me up using whatever technology is available in ten years going to find me? I don't have my name on this web site. Not my last name, anyway, and even if I did, I have a common name. Doesn't that protect me?
I do try to write so that if people accidentally find me and figure out who I am (like, say, my boss) or if people are reading that I don't expect, even though I told them about it (like, say, my relatives) that it will be okay, although really I can barely keep all the readers I know about in mind when I'm writing. I just try not to write about other people much (besides my boyfriend) and try not to say much that is negative and damaging (I've already told my boss about my broken-thing-of-the-day game).
I've seen several articles about college students getting eliminated from consideration for jobs they've applied for because people found their myspace sites. Wouldn't it be okay to have an unprofessional myspace site if your real name is nowhere on there? Or am I naive, too?
The article on good blog design said that you should have an "about me" page just like businesses need an "about us" page. You're supposed to mention the purpose of your blog, for example, so if a person came upon your blog because of an entry on horse racing, he could learn if it was a whole blog on horse racing or just a rare entry on the subject. The article also said people like to see a picture of the person to get a handle on their identity. I don't think a cast-of-characters page was mentioned, but I've thought that was a good idea when I've seen it before.
It was also recommended that you update regularly, ideally daily, but weekly or even monthly updates could also work.
As you guys can see, I do not follow any of these suggestions except the daily updating, and I wasn't doing that at first either.
My info page has nothing but my city, state and zip code (I'm surprised I even put that), that my name is "livingdeb," and that my birthday is January.
The article did mention that if the blog is only for friends and family, you don't need to follow these rules, but otherwise you should.
In fact, I am writing this mostly for friends and family, and I don't make it easy for strangers to find. On the other hand, when I look at the list of people who have "friended me" on LiveJournal, there are 13 people. Five are good friends. Two are other friends who I don't know very well at this time. One is an online journallor I met through an online, uh, conversation group(?) who encouraged me to start my own journal. One is his best friend and two or three are other readers of his. One is someone I found on LiveJournal. So basically half are friends and half are the audience this writer is talking about.
I'm not sure whether I like the suggestions this author makes (although I do agree with his suggestions in his other articles). I do sometimes like seeing where someone is coming from. For example, Frugal Homemaker Plus explains, "I am a homemaker trying to be as frugal as possible without compromising quality of living. We have some student debt to pay off. Our goal is to be entirely debt free in five years or less, without me having to work full time outside the home." I like that.
However, I mostly read blogs without themes. And anything they could say would probably be mostly demographics, which I find distracting. I'd really rather just go around imagining that they are basically just like me until something in the story says otherwise. I've had fun discovering that people are different genders, different races, different ages, different sizes, having different sexual orientations, living in different states and countries, and having very odd jobs.
But I'd rather not see that first. I'd rather judge someone by their writing first. Sure, I'm going to unfairly eliminate people with bad writing. But if their writing is bad, and I'm learning about them via their writing, I don't mind losing out so much. On the other hand, if there's some hulking hairy guy I might not identify with in real life but who's a good writer, I'd rather not eliminate that guy.
And I also leave out this kind of stuff out of a paranoia about stalkers and such. A careful reader can figure out where I live, where I work, where to find me, but I don't make it easy for a casual reader.
The article recommends that you don't write anything you don't want a hiring manager reading in ten years. Are people googling my name or looking me up using whatever technology is available in ten years going to find me? I don't have my name on this web site. Not my last name, anyway, and even if I did, I have a common name. Doesn't that protect me?
I do try to write so that if people accidentally find me and figure out who I am (like, say, my boss) or if people are reading that I don't expect, even though I told them about it (like, say, my relatives) that it will be okay, although really I can barely keep all the readers I know about in mind when I'm writing. I just try not to write about other people much (besides my boyfriend) and try not to say much that is negative and damaging (I've already told my boss about my broken-thing-of-the-day game).
I've seen several articles about college students getting eliminated from consideration for jobs they've applied for because people found their myspace sites. Wouldn't it be okay to have an unprofessional myspace site if your real name is nowhere on there? Or am I naive, too?