10 Sins of Blog Usability

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Jakob Nielson is the guru of website usability. Being a guru he has his fair share of devout disciples and detractors. That being said, his ideas are good and are at least worth listening to, if not putting in to practise. In fact, sometimes his rules are worth breaking, and the test of a good rule is whether or not its worth it to break once in awhile.

He has trained his attention to the world of blogs recently. This is a quick 10 point list of blog do's and don'ts. Very useful. Here are his 10 points and how I stack up:

1. No Author Biographies

Check. I have something of a "What is sacrificial rabbit" section buried in my navigation that one day soon I am going to do something about (honest). But I don't have a personal biography. Need to fix that.

2. No Author Photo

Check. No excuse either with an awesome photographer for a wife.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles

This is something in common with a lot of blogs. A catchy, but nondescript headline, and I am way guilty. I am already trying to fix that however. At the same time, blogs—especially the personal kind—are a perfect format for weird and catchy headlines. I probably won't follow this rule religiously.

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go

This is bad. Again, this is the way things are done in the blogsphere. I am going to stop doing this. It is dumb, bad, and clunky.

5. Classic Hits are Buried

I don't really do this one. All of my entries are tagged, and tagged pretty well, so it makes it easy to find posts about bdsm, scheme or my meta mumblings. I need to work on the tag interface to make it even easier still however.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation

Does no calendar count? For diary/journal like blogs, the calendar navigation system works and makes sense. But for a topical blog like mine, it is basically pointless.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency

Guilty. My frequency has gotten better though. I am going to try to pre-load articles though, so I have at least a post every day.

8. Mixing Topics

Jakobs thought is that a blog should be a single topic and a single topic only. I don't buy that. Not in the least. I would own at least 8 or 9 blogs at that point. Posting daily to 9 blogs gives me the willies (posting daily to a perversion blog would give me a different kind of willy). I am not really sure how to approach this. I guess dialog is the key. So for you code fanatics, do you enjoy the smattering of music and perversion posts? Likewise for you perverts. Do my ramblings on electronics and programming languages bore you, or are they at least entertaining. Would it make sense to split up Sacrificial Rabbit? My belief is a resounding "NO". But what do you think? Leave a comment or two.

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

So guilty I need a spanking. It is not so much that I forgot, but rather that I didn't care, and the action is no-longer reverseable. Really, its not that I spend a lot of time talking shit about people on my blog. I may write about what people say, but I don't spend time on who people are. The biggest issue might be everything under the "perversion" tag.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Nope. I have the eminently cool blog subdomain, that is sure to become passe at any moment. I'll still own it then too.