Top Ten Weblog Design Mistakes

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This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on October 18, 2005). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Jakob Nielsen recently published a list of the top ten weblog design mistakes. As I’ve done in the past with similar listings, I took a quick look to see how I feel my site fares against his list.

  1. No Author Biographies

    I’m good here, presenting a full about page for the curious passerby.

  2. No Author Photo

    Again, I’m covered on my about page.

  3. Nondescript Posting Titles

    I’m probably a bit on-again, off-again as far as this goes, but I generally try to be pretty good about coming up with titles that are pretty clear and relevant to the post.

  4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go

    Most of the time, I think I’m pretty good here, either describing the link with the link text or the surrounding context. I also make sure to use the title attribute on my links, so that destination information pops up when the cursor hovers over the link.

  5. Classic Hits are Buried

    I’ve done my best to make sure that older posts bubble up to the surface as easily as possible. Not only do I have a (self-selected) ‘greatest hits’ section at the top of my archives page, but every individual post page has a (database generated) list of ‘related posts’ in the sidebar.

  6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation

    I’m not even a fan of calendars as navigation, so I stopped using one a long time ago. I did put a lot of work into organizing my archives: the main archives page has a chronological listing of the monthly archive pages, and then a category list that includes links to the last ten entries in each category in addition to links to the main category archive page.

    Within each monthly or category archive page, rather than presenting the full text of every entry (which would make for insanely huge pages), I include the short summary paragraph for each entry, making it easy to skim through and get a good idea of each entry in the archive.

  7. Irregular Publishing Frequency

    Okay, this one I tend to waffle on, though it’s rare that I go for more than a few days without posting something, even if it is just inane babble. Overall, I think I do okay on this one, even if I’m not perfect.

  8. Mixing Topics

    Here’s one where not only am I not following the recommendation, I don’t really want to. While I know that a more tightly-focused weblog can be more “successful” (at least as far as advertising or targeting a specific audience), that’s just not my style. I’ve got too many interests to limit myself to just posting about one of them — and I’d likely not post nearly as much if I tried to do that. In the end, this is my personal site, and I’m quite happy with bouncing all over the place topically.

  9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

    Heh — I don’t think I’ll forget this one, since forgetting that I was writing for my current boss landed me in hot water some time ago. ;)

  10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

    No worries there, having been using michaelhanscom.com for nearly three years now.

So that’s about eight and a half or nine out of ten. Not too shabby.