5 things not to have on your blog

Posted on 09. Nov, 2009 by Claudia in Blogging101

As part of an upcoming series of posts on blogging, I would like to kick start with a simple list of 5 things one should avoid when creating a blog. This list is based on my personal observation and preference. Feel free to disagree.

1. Do not embed nor auto play any music or video when visitor arrives at your blog.
   This not only will cause your blog to load slower, but it will give your visitors, who has their speakers on, to get a scare of their live! You may even get lesser traffic because no one dare to come visit your blog during office hour, afraid that they may just get some random music blasting out from their earphones or worst still speakers! So keep those music players out of your blog please!
2. Do not use blinking backgrounds or animated gif anywhere on your blog.
   I know you like blink blink stuff! I know you want to personalised your blog, but spare some thoughts for your friends and readers. Those blinking background are making it hard to read what you wrote and it’s causing headaches as its torturing the eyes. If you really need them, keep them to the minimum.
3. sToP plAyiNg wIth YouR sHifT oR cAps lOck keYs!
   dO yOU sTilL nEed mE tO ElABoratE oN tHis?
4. Stop placing banners all over the blog!
   I know you’re trying to get people to click on your google ads, but overdoing it really pisses people off. Especially if your content is so much lesser than the number of banners you have on that page. Ads work when placed strategically and with good content. Google Ads and text (content) works better together too.
5. Broken image links and badly aligned post.
   If you cannot live without having tons of photos in your post, invest a little with proper hosting for your photos. Having broken image links or ‘Bandwidth exceed’ box showing isn’t very nice you know?  And if you are wondering why all your images are taking forever to load, resize them! Uploading a full 5mp photo up onto your photobucket and then resizing by adjusting the size is not the same as uploading a resized file and of the same width and height. Learn your photo sizes right.

Besides the above 5 not to haves, anything else you feel should be left out or kept to the minimum on blogs?

Tags: Blogging, List

About Claudia

Claudia blogs at claudia.sg where she talks about the latest trends in gadgets, entertainment, lifestyle and social media in Singapore. In the day, Claudia is developing and managing 24seven Communications.