{"id":55,"date":"2007-01-21T22:21:05","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T02:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/2007\/01\/21\/what-not-to-do-to-your-blog-design\/"},"modified":"2011-07-07T17:16:58","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T21:16:58","slug":"what-not-to-do-to-your-blog-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/2007\/01\/21\/what-not-to-do-to-your-blog-design\/","title":{"rendered":"What not to do to your Blog design"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--CusAds--><p>One of the forum that I visit regularly had a thread about what you should not do when designing your website or blog. <\/p>\n<div class=\"6bc5ccbe3d2ff567e8bb701db5576878\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: right; margin:10px 0 10px 10px;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-3375789278566919\";\r\n\/* webstyle_inpost_300x250 *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"4670586556\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s my list of blog design &#8211; &#8220;what not to wear&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Autoplay video<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Autoplay music<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>flashy buttons<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>too many buttons (put them in a roll up menu if you must have them)<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>advertisements that take up the whole header area making me scroll to see the actual header and posts below.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Too many advertisements &#8211; don&#8217;t do the max Google Adsense &#8211; you actually make less money from them if you do too many!!! Plus it turns off your visitors.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Pages with so many plug ins, large file size images, buttons etc that make the page really slow to load- or worse cause it to freeze when loading.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Text that is hard to read &#8211; white on black doesn&#8217;t work if you are trying to read a long post &#8211; light gray text works better &#8230; same for florescent coloured text on black or white backgrounds, or neon backgrounds with black or white text.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>no paragraphs &#8211; this makes posts very hard to read.  If you want visitors to come back or stay on your site for a while use paragraphs.<\/li>\n<p><\/p>\n<li>Set your posts so that only 5 or 10 display on the main page!!!! We don&#8217;t need to see  everything you&#8217;ve ever written on your blog for the last two years!<\/li>\n<p>\n <\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tips!<\/strong><\/p><!--CusAds-->\n<p>Use roll up menus in your sidebars if you have lots of buttons or blogrolls etc. It really makes the page look so much tidier.<\/p>\n<p>Test your blog design in Firefox, Internet explorer, Opera and Netscape &#8211; all easy to download and have on your computer. Make sure your site loads correctly and works well in all the browsers listed above,<\/p>\n<p>Also look at your site on different computers. Text and background colour might look great on your monitor, but really bad on 5 other computer monitors that you test it on.<\/p>\n<p>As I said in the last point- visitors only need to see your last 5 or 10 posts when they load your page. If you have more than that showing your page will load very slowly.<\/p>\n<p>Same with categories and archives. Do your visitors need to see your archives dating back to 2001? That&#8217;s a long list taking up valuable blog sidebar real estate. Use a roll up menu or modify the code in your page so that only 5 or 10 archives and or categories are viewed.<\/p>\n<p>Every once in a while ask your readers their opinion on your page. Ask for constructive criticism. If the majority of your readers state they don&#8217;t like something or that your page loads slowly &#8211; do something about it.<\/p>\n<!--CusAds--><p>I&#8217;m sure I could add many more points to this post, but I think this is enough to get you started.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"6bc5ccbe3d2ff567e8bb701db5576878\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<br\/>\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-3375789278566919\";\r\n\/* webstyle_inpost_300x250 *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"4670586556\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<br\/>\r\n<?php if ( is_search() || is_single() || is_page() || is_paged() || is_category() || is_archive() ) { ?>\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\nch_client = \"dragonden\";\r\nch_type = \"mpu\";\r\nch_width = 468;\r\nch_height = 120;\r\nch_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\";\r\nch_color_title = \"0094d2\";\r\nch_color_text = \"333333\";\r\nch_non_contextual = 4;\r\nch_vertical =\"premium\";\r\nch_sid = \"webstyle_betweenposts2\";\r\nvar ch_queries = new Array( );\r\nvar ch_selected=Math.floor((Math.random()*ch_queries.length));\r\nif ( ch_selected < ch_queries.length ) {\r\nch_query = ch_queries[ch_selected];\r\n}\r\n\/\/--><\/script>\r\n<script  src=\"http:\/\/scripts.chitika.net\/eminimalls\/amm.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<?php } ?>\r\n<br\/>\n<\/div>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the forum that I visit regularly had a thread about what you should not do when designing your website or blog. Here&#8217;s my list of blog design &#8211; &#8220;what not to wear&#8221; Autoplay video Autoplay music flashy buttons too many buttons (put them in a roll up menu if you must have them) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,11,12,28],"tags":[353,354,355,356,357,358,359,360,361,362,345,363,232,364,365,366,367,120,233,368,369,235,49,370,371,372,373,374,375,50,376,377,378,379,380,52,381],"class_list":{"0":"post-55","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-site-maintenance","8":"category-webdesign","9":"category-wordpress","10":"tag-ask-readers","11":"tag-autoplay-music","12":"tag-autoplay-video","13":"tag-browsers","14":"tag-color","15":"tag-constructive-criticism","16":"tag-firefox","17":"tag-flashy-buttons","18":"tag-hard-to-read","19":"tag-huge-images","20":"tag-image","21":"tag-internet-explorer","22":"tag-menu","23":"tag-monitors","24":"tag-netscape","25":"tag-only-display-a-few-posts","26":"tag-opera","27":"tag-paragraph","28":"tag-roll-up-menu","29":"tag-roll-up-menus","30":"tag-safari","31":"tag-sidebar","32":"tag-site-design","33":"tag-slow-loading","34":"tag-small-archive-lists","35":"tag-small-category-lists","36":"tag-spell-check","37":"tag-test-blog-design","38":"tag-text-hard-to-read","39":"tag-tips","40":"tag-too-many-advertisements","41":"tag-too-many-buttons","42":"tag-too-many-plugins","43":"tag-use-paragraphs","44":"tag-use-proper-grammar","45":"tag-web-design","46":"tag-what-not-to-do","47":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/webdesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}