01/11/2005 @19:53:34 ^20:30:39

The Top Ten Weblog Design Mistakes

The Top Ten Weblog Design Mistakes. I think I break pretty much all of them, but I don't care!

1. No Author Biographies

I used to have an "about me" page, but I decided it was full of stupid crap that nobody would care about, except perhaps someone who wants to embarrass me. Also when I redid this site with mod_perl I didn't take into account the need for static pages in the same style as the generated ones and it was easier just to remove them! So now you know!

2. No Author Photo

Are you kidding? The hell with an author photo, I look like a tremendous prick (probably because I am a tremendous prick) There have been far too many dreadful pictures of me taken in the past; nobody wants any more.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles

Yeah I tend to go for humorous rather than descriptive and fail to achieve either

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go

I do actually try to do links properly! But then again nearly all my links are either to previous updates, or files in the /idgames database, and it's not hard, when linking to a wad, to put its name between the tags, is it?

5. Classic Hits are Buried

What classic hits?

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation

Side note: I am copying these titles from the original article. I am not responsible for these typographical horrors. This guy capitalises like a retard.

Anyway yeah I could implement tags but I think they're stupid and I'm not going back and categorising nearly four years worth of posts, many of which wouldn't fit into one category as I have often written large updates with several sections. Besides the only tags I'd have are "Doom", "Computers", and "Self-hatred"

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency

Nobody reads this bullshit so why should I post on it every day. Plus this is why I have snafu. You click on that every day, and with any luck somebody on there will have updated. (I'll never turn it into a feed aggregator though since RSS is filth for bilgerats)

8. Mixing topics

Oh I think I covered this a couple of points up. Well anyway knobs to you, I'll write a long rambling article on a whole bunch of completely unrelated shite if I want to.

Oh wait I've actually now read what the guy said under this heading. He doesn't mean writing updates that are on several different topics he means the whole site covers articles on many different topics. Well most of what I post is about Doom these days so I guess I don't mix topics too much.

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

What future boss?

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

My domain name is owned by a free DNS provider, nuts to you!

So much for writing a usable weblog then. I'm vaguely surprised by the omission of a point about commenting though; I often see people on Debian Planet complaining about lack of commenting facilities on each others sites and having to answer each others posts with posts of their own (but that's how the ~~~BLOGOSPHERE~~~ works isn't it??) and I've even had people say they wish my site has comments but as I'm sure I've said before, fuck them. (The comments, not the people. I don't want to alienate you even more than I'm doing already.)