Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake

[personal] How not to make me want to link to your blog

How not to make me want to link to your blog.

First, run a really interesting blog like Curiosity Counts or BLDBLOG. One I want to look at every day because you cover cool topics.

Then be offline about 25% of the time, like Curiosity Counts. Hard to load, hard to read, when the server is inaccessible.

Then use some kind of script-based tiled design that makes it hard to read stories by scrolling down because the multiple columns of irregularly sized tiles. For bonus points, ensure that this tiled design makes it almost impossible to link to specific stories from outside the blog. This is called prioritizing your design aesthetic over your readability. Which I respect the blogger's choices in that regard, it makes me a lot less likely to link to the blog when I can neither find the stories, nor find their external permalinks.

Also, update your blog irregularly, about once a week or less, and when you do, load three or four posts at once. BLDGBLOG does this with annoying frequency. This makes daily blog linkers like me a lot less likely to link individual posts, as we have to pick and choose among what's current, or remember to link later to aging posts.

The content is so cool on both these blogs that I keep going back, but the format is so annoying that I will eventually give up. Meanwhile, my links reach about 10,000 people a day through WordPress, RSS, LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter; which these blogs are missing out on because of their eccentric production choices. I realize they aren't blogging for my convenience, but I cannot be the only blog reader out there troubled by these issues.

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