Biggest Blog Reading Pet Peeves, reposted from @toithomas #blog


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When I visit a blog, there are certain things that turn me off, but I’m not too obstinate about my reaction to these. I realize that while some of these things drive me crazy, they may not brother someone else at all. In the end, good content always wins out, but…
If it’s troublesome for me to view the things I want to read, I don’t hurry back to read them.
Cool crazy fonts- These look good until you try to read something. Then it becomes a matter of interpretation. Is that an ‘o’ or is it an ‘a’; was that word supposed to be “bubble” or “babble”? Hopefully the context will help with this, but that’s only if you can read it well enough to understand the context.
Cool crazy wallpaper- For, pretty much, the same reason as above, complex background images drive me crazy. I am currently following one blog through Feedly, where 90% of its posts appear in the Feedly preview. Anything I can’t read there, I don’t. I made the mistake of visiting the actual blog to continue an article and I couldn’t read it. The background image interfered with the text to the point where it was hard to see the letters, let alone understand them.
Too much going on- This is something I constantly stress about on my own blog. I have lots to share, but I try really hard to keep it all well-organized and sectioned off so as not to clutter up my blog. There are many blogs that I stopped reading because there was just too much going on; it was too distracting. On the other hand though, one of my favorite blogs to read, is full of clutter and it drives me crazy every time I visit it, but the content is so good that I just bear it and move on.
Pop-ups- Advertisement is part of the blogosphere, so complaining about it is pointless. People do what they have to do to maintain their blogs and some of us are just stuck with the consequences of using particular services, but pop-ups are something else. Sure there is always pop-up blocker to help with that, but sometimes something gets missed, especially on pages your computer knows you visit a lot. It drives me crazy to be in the middle of an interesting article and then have someone walk across the screen offering me classes on how to write a book.
Last one, for today.
Hunting- Hunting isn’t a feature blogs have, but is the result of something they don’t. I really don’t like having to hunt down information on a blog that should be clearly displayed or searchable.
When I visit a blog and the owner of it leaves a message on the page somewhere, stating to the effect, “Contact me for more information,” but then I can’t find a way to contact them, it drives me crazy.
When I read a good article, which is clearly part of a series (such as this one), and would like to read more; it drives me crazy when all I have is an archive sorted by date to search through.
It really drives me crazy when I start to like a blog and want to know more about the blogger, but can’t find anything about them. I search their bio and find a one liner, “My name is Bob and I write this blog.”
So there you have it, for now anyway. These are some of my Biggest Blog Reading Pet Peeves.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords