Since before I started blogging, I was blog-hopping, going from my favorites to ones I’ve never heard of before. Often, though, I would find myself closing out of blogs before getting too far because of one thing or another.
This post is just to show what I don’t like seeing on blogs, but my opinions don’t speak for everyone.
1. Wide Sidebars
I realize that everyone needs sidebars, but when they cover more than a third of my screen, then it just bothers me. I’ve seen quite a few blogs with this type of sidebar and it just seems pointless.
2. Not cutting the posts–Leaving them full-length on the main page
Okay, first of all, this takes away from the posts views. At least on WordPress, views on the main page STAY on the main page. So, if you leave your posts full length, and don’t use the “Read More Tag”, then your posts won’t get as many views. In the editing page, the “Read More Tag” looks like this:
And it guarantees that people actually open the post.
On another note, it also just makes the main page a real pain to scroll through, because you have to go by the entire post, instead of just a thumbnail. I often stop scrolling after a while, and just close.
3. No review index
I am so dependent on review indexes. It’s a lot to maintain, but so worth it. It makes it easy for readers to find the book they’re looking for, instead of scrolling through posts upon posts of other reviews just to find the one they wanted. And! If the blogger doesn’t cut their posts, then it’ll just take longer. If I know a blogger reviewed a novel, but I can’t find it easily, then I’ll go looking for a different review.
4. Too MUCH vs Too LITTLE
So, just today, I visited two different blogs. One I believe is fairly well known, at least by publishers–and the design is so complicated and it made my head hurt. Every button was a hexagon, and the background was a galaxy and everything was see-through, and lets just say that the design was so complicated that I was trying to figure out how to navigate the site longer than I was looking at the posts. It was ridiculous.
The second one I looked at seemed like a decent blog, but something about the design bothered me. It was a turquoise background with a white frame, and that was it. There were no graphics along the side or even a header image. It was very generic.
Okay, so maybe this isn’t much, but seeing these things usually make me exit out immediately. I don’t want to waste my time searching for something or waiting for the page to load. I also don’t want to have to scroll through endless pages upon pages just to find one post.
Organization is key, in my opinion. Crosspost everywhere, schedule posts into the future, and keep it consistent.
I’m so guilty of not using the read more thing. I know it exists. I just don’t. And I’m working on my indexes. I have two I’m working on. The series one (which is live) and the non series one (which isn’t but is slowly coming together). The depression prevents me from working on them too much at once. But I do realize the importance which is why I work on them when I can. And put the content warnings on the indexes as well which makes it more time consuming but it’s worth it to me.
Also, overall, I agree which is why my blog looks the way it does. I tweak minor things from time to time but overall it’s going to continue looking the way it does because aesthetically that’s what I like/prefer
Yeah, I totally understand all of that. I’ve been meaning to do a marginalization index, and more recently I’ve been adding trigger warnings at the end of reviews. Keeping up a blog is exhausting work, so the post was just commenting on things that I personally found annoying.
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