{"id":3540,"date":"2005-10-18T12:52:19","date_gmt":"2005-10-18T19:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/10\/18\/top-ten-weblog-design-mistakes\/"},"modified":"2019-12-18T16:39:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T00:39:51","slug":"top-ten-weblog-design-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/10\/18\/top-ten-weblog-design-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten Weblog Design Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:7543,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.useit.com\\\/alertbox\\\/weblogs.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20120819025503\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.useit.com\\\/alertbox\\\/weblogs.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.nngroup.com\\\/alertbox\\\/weblogs.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-18 14:58:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 19:20:45&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 19:20:45&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Jakob Nielsen recently published a list of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.useit.com\/alertbox\/weblogs.html\" title=\"Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes\">top ten weblog design mistakes<\/a>. As I&#8217;ve done in the past with similar listings, I took a quick look to see how I feel my site fares against his list.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>No Author Biographies\n<p>I&#8217;m good here, presenting a full <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/about.shtml\" title=\"Eclecticism: Michael Hanscom\">about page<\/a> for the curious passerby.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>No Author Photo<\/p>\n<p>Again, I&#8217;m covered on my <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/about.shtml\" title=\"Eclecticism: Michael Hanscom\">about page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Nondescript Posting Titles<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Links Don&#8217;t Say Where They Go<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, I think I&#8217;m pretty good here, either describing the link with the link text or the surrounding context. I also make sure to use the <code>title<\/code> attribute on my links, so that destination information pops up when the cursor hovers over the link.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Classic Hits are Buried<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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) &#8216;greatest hits&#8217; section at the top of my <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/archives.shtml\" title=\"Eclecticism: Archives\">archives page<\/a>, but every individual post page has a (database generated) list of &#8216;related posts&#8217; in the sidebar.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>The Calendar is the Only Navigation<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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 <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/archives.shtml\" title=\"Eclecticism: Archives\">archives<\/a>: 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.<\/p>\n<p>Within each <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2005\/10\/\" title=\"Eclecticism: October 2005 Archives\">monthly<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/15minutes\/\" title=\"Eclecticism: 15Minutes Archives\">category<\/a> archive page, rather than presenting the full text of every entry (which would make for <em>insanely<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Irregular Publishing Frequency<\/p>\n<p>Okay, this one I tend to waffle on, though it&#8217;s rare that I go for more than a few days without posting <em>something<\/em>, even if it is just inane babble. Overall, I think I do okay on this one, even if I&#8217;m not perfect.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Mixing Topics<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s one where not only am I not following the recommendation, I don&#8217;t really want to. While I know that a more tightly-focused weblog can be more &#8220;successful&#8221; (at least as far as advertising or targeting a specific audience), that&#8217;s just not my style. I&#8217;ve got too many interests to limit myself to just posting about one of them &#8212; and I&#8217;d likely not post nearly as much if I tried to do that. In the end, this is my personal site, and I&#8217;m quite happy with bouncing all over the place topically.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss<\/p>\n<p>Heh &#8212; I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll forget <em>this<\/em> one, since forgetting that I was writing for my <em>current<\/em> boss landed me in hot water some time ago. ;)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service<\/p>\n<p>No worries there, having been using <code>michaelhanscom.com<\/code> for <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/12\/michaelhanscomc.html\" title=\"Eclecticism: michaelhanscom.com\">nearly three years now<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So that&#8217;s about eight and a half or nine out of ten. Not too shabby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jakob Nielsen recently published a list of the top ten weblog design mistakes. As I&#8217;ve done in the past with similar listings, I took a quick look to see how I feel my site fares against his list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040],"tags":[599,25],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-weblogs","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}