Bad Blog Trends

“… a slow but growing convention that certain visual symbols or images be used to indicate certain other things on the net.” That’s intriguing, Anon. Have anything — sites, etc — off the top of your head you’d be willing to share? that discuss this, that is? or anyone else? this is the kind of stuff that fascinates me.
Hey, spacerook, you’re welcome. let me know how things go with this, would you? or feel free if you want to discuss more off board to contact me.

Off board ? Heck !

as the old saying goes, a person is there own worst critic… i hope with all this research and writing that you stumble apoun, the bad designs your site has are fixed.
[quote] I’m specifically interested in design issues that are cliched or just useless.[/quote]
i’d like to use your index page as the basis, ive gone no deeper, and i do not feel inclined to either. i wont bash your content as thats yours to write and for me to ignore if i want.
1) the background. people will be reading heavy amounts of content, think about that O_o.
2) the use of text colors on the calander. its ‘useless’ having a calander when people cant even read the current date.
3) redundent links. the site has archives down the left, which look to work, but then at the top you have ‘archives’ as well. but not only is there a second link, the link doesnt work, it has a javascript popup to telling us, we cant go anywhere.
4) removing the redundent link in your 3 part main navigation makes the top nav almost useless.
5) serious revision of navgation layout and categorization & placement should be looked at and tried.
6) praticality of semi-hidden login & registeration links.
i really did cut down wut i put wrote, so i dont run myself off on tangents. you obviously have something to say and thats great, its always great to read something other than your typical immature emo kid complaining about how ‘their’ bad life is.
However, i dont think a person should be writing an article, about bad designs when they themselves have a hard time ahereing to design principles taught or even written about dozens of times already.
Then again, this may be the exact look your going for. but i really do not find that too believable.
I compliment you on your display of text, it works. I find many blogs hard to read with not only clashing colors, but size, it seems minimal is kool to some people there for font-size: 1px; is acceptable by todays bloggers. i dont appreciate the fact people take small to another level.
GL with your blog, your article & the future. but i do emphasis that a revision of your website should be done to at least hold some of the mentions in the article you are writing or have written already. otherwise it may not be taken seriously, coming from a person who cant adhere to the standars they researched, and im assuming, agree with.

btw having looked at your site again without really having anything else to write. i noticed another piece to your design that made me want to write another post.
your table/css layout.
-header image(s) have a thick grey background.
-3 nav links have a 1px border, which looks similar to the color of the header border color.
-border color & width of the left/mid/right colums
-footer background, border color/width
-too many font-sizes in use for my taste.
anyways, im off this time, gl with your writing ??

Bad Weblog names:
* Anything ending in “Pundit” (a good indicator that they’ll be polemic and unenlightening, no matter what political viewpoint they have)
* Anything containing “Rant”, e.g. “Julie’s Rants” (a good sign they’ll be boring)
* Anything containing the word “musings” (yep, they’ll be boring too)

How about anything attempting to be a clever, but cliche, play on words…like “doubting thomas”?
??

what abt blogs ending in blog/journal…
as simple as ‘my journal’ :O)

MPT:

Bad design details amongst Mac-using Weblog authors:
* CSS shadows on text.
* Photoshopped shadows on graphics.
* What the author is playing on iTunes right now. (As if we care.)
Bad design details generally:
* Dashed borders.
* “Comments (0) Trackbacks (0)?? under every post.
* Mouseover effects.
* People thinking they know better than the browser designer what cursor a particular HTML element should have. (I have yet to see someone doing this justifiably.)

Why no CSS shadows? That’s like saying “I don’t want to see the color red! That’s so lame!”.
As for what’s playing on iTunes, I carry it on my site and I think it’s a rather significant way of getting to know me. I’ve had many people mail me to talk about what I lisen to.
I have seen Dashed borders used excellently many places.
Mouseover effects for links is essential in helping ease the reading of text that includes links, by not underlining them until they’re moused over.
And I have changed the mouse cursor on many elements where it made sense.
Rather it seems that you’re angry at anyone not doing things _exactly_ like you.

this thread could have so much avoided…

And I have changed the mouse cursor on many elements where it made sense.

Where would that be? Because I have never ever seen a context where it would make sense to change my cursor from the browser default.

the windows help icon on the help icon. make sense :O)

Only for people who have difficulty reading the word ‘help’ or figuring out what a question mark might mean. Those people need more help than any cursor change – or indeed help page – can give them.

Mage111, thanks for your comments. I 100% agree that I have some house cleaning of my own to do. Some of this is laziness on my part, in addition to trying to learn the best way to use WordPress.

mage111. I loved your post. There is nothing worse than design poseurs whose own sites are all over the place. I am sorry to say though that the proper ettiquette here when seeing a blog coded so badly is to say: Loved your blog dude Really cool. Anything remotely constructive like your post is rarely appreciated.

I am not a poseur, Anonymous (if that is your real name).
Oh, and I implemented most of the fixes that’s Mage111 talked about.

My opinion is that the default blog templates are cliched and overused.
* Lists of links. Links to friends and blogrolls provide me, the reader, no context to determine if I want to follow those links. Maybe they’ll be full of great info, and maybe they’ll suck. Without context, I’m wasting time playing a guessing game.
* Lists of previous posts by date. Again, zero context about the content of the posts. Do I, the reader, care that you posted every Monday? Unless the post body or category specifically calls out the fact that Mondays are a regularly occuring “Special Feature!”, I won’t work back through your archive.
* Calendars showing your post frequency. See above. No context.
* Lists of “most popular” posts. Does a new reader find value in popular posts? I don’t.
* Page load time. Why do I, the reader, care that your page was displayed in 0.64 seconds? This kind of self-congratulation adds nothing to the value of a weblog.
* No means of direct personal contact. If I can’t find an email address for you on your site — whether linked or non-linked text — I’ll be less inclined to visit again. Sometimes a comment is inappropriate — or too public — for the message I want to send. I like to know that I can send an email to _just you_ if I need/want to.
* Letter spacing -1, as is default in WP. It looks bunched up and ugly in my browser. Don’t make me twiddle settings in my browser to read your site. The fact that you published suggests that you want an audience. Work with me, not against me.
* Teeny tiny columns for your main text. People shoe-horn in so many crap lists of links and calendars and badge buttons and whatnot that their blog posts — that which IS their content — is crammed and squished in to a narrow column.
These are, obviously, just my opinion.