Sephy’s post is now up, and if you are using blogger you probably want to bookmark this one for future use. 
Great post Sephy!
Demystifying Blogger Template Editing
Also, Sephy has posted on how to add a google search box to your blog. It’s simple and easy. Do it today!
Do you blog for you, or for your readers? This is a serious question that every blogger needs to consider carefully. If you blog for yourself, you will choose a blog design that appeals to you, not caring what your readers think. If you blog for your readers, you probably thought about what your readers would like to see when they visit your blog.
If you blog for your readers and you choose your design for you? You might be upsetting potential new readers without even thinking about it.
Some Food For Thought
Light Is The Norm
If I could design my blog to look how *I* want it to look, the background would be dark instead of light because I find dark backgrounds easier on my eyes. I design this site for the readers, which means light is the best choice. Not everyone has an LCD screen yet. Dark backgrounds on a CRT screen (the older style of monitor which is more like a TV) are difficult to view.
Dark text on a light background is what the majority of Internet users are used to. It is what they see on most websites they visit. They are so used to it that when you make a site with a dark background color, they react negatively without knowing why. If you want to appeal to the broadest range of people, you have to take things like this into consideration.
Everyone Sees It Differently
On a forum I visit – scambaits – they have a very dark color scheme but it used to be a lot darker. People reading the forum on the older CRT screens often had to highlight the text with their mouse in order to be able to read it.
Users had been doing this regularly for some time BUT NOBODY TOLD THE SITE OWNER they were having so much trouble with the color scheme until the owner was considering making a change to the site themselves. I cannot imagine how annoying it must have been for those people to read the forums.
The Psychology Of Color
When designing a site it is important to consider the psychology of color. When I was a part of the team putting together Fraudwatchers, we looked into what would be the best color for a website designed to support scam victims. Though I am no longer involved with the team at Fraudwatchers I still believe this is one of the best looking victim support websites on the net.
The three colors we considered using on the site were blue, lilac and green. These are calming colors. You’ll note these are colors I tend to use a lot here, too.
For more info on color psychology, check out Color_Expert.
Color Is Important
Another issue on the scambaits forums is color clash. Some colors do not work with the background color they have for posts. That means if a user chooses the wrong color to make their post with it can give readers a headache – and they tend to skip reading the post.
Red is one of the worst over there for color clash – and I had made a lot of posts using red with the old color scheme because it worked fine with that scheme, I had to go through and edit them all! We’re talking over 800 posts.
When you’re putting colors together on your site you need to stop and think – do they work together? Do they look good together? They may look ok on your screen but be sure to check how they look on other kinds of computer monitors too.
Take A Moment
I’m not the kind of person who keeps my mouth shut, so I would send a private message to posters whose colors clashed and let them know the colors were clashing on my screen. People were *always* appreciative of knowing how to make their posts easier to read. That’s because they want people to read their posts – just as you want people to read your blog.
If you visit a blog and something truly puts you off, you may want to consider letting the blogger know. Politely, of course. You may also want to ask your readers.. but..
Will People Tell You The Truth?
Ah, there’s the difficult part. If you have been blogging for a while, you have a little community of people who love your content. If you made your background red with pink text (take a look, I made it especially for ya’all), they’d still read it anyway.
If you ask your readers what they think of your site design, they will tell you what they THINK you want to hear. They will be loyal. They will be polite. They will be friendly. They are the equivalent of men telling their wives “No honey, I don’t think it makes you look fat”.
That’s all well and good – and wise on the part of the man and on the part of the bloggers who read you – by now you are probably reading them back and they do not want to risk your readership by being brutally honest.
Unfortunately it does not help you as a blogger who wants to improve your blog design. It does not help you capture new readers. It does not help you to know what they find annoying. Even if you ask them to be brutally honest, some readers will struggle to do so. Not me. Just so you know.
Brace Yourselves Now
I am about to tell you a harsh truth. New readers coming to your blog for the first time? They will hit the close button in that top corner without reading ONE word of your content if they are put off by the color scheme or your header graphic.
If your blog makes their eyes hurt. If it looks like fingernails on a blackboard for the eyes. If your header graphic is poor quality. If your font is unattractive. There’s a multitude of design mistakes you can make as a blogger which will send potential new readers away quicker than you can blink.
Whether You Like It Or Not
There are many blogs out there – and the majority of blog readers will take a blog with good design but lesser content over a blog with bad design and good content EVERY time.
You work hard on your content so you owe it to yourself as a blogger to present it to potential new readers in a way they can see it. Especially given how difficult it is to get people to visit your blog in the first place.
Ask Someone Impartial.
If you want a fresh set of eyes to take a look at your blog the way a new reader would look at it, RT Cunningham from The Untwisted Vortex will review your blog if you leave him a comment. For free! He will tell you the truth. He won’t be nasty about it. He’ll just be honest. It might be hard to hear but you may need to hear it. He also will give you ideas for improvement, which is useful.
Hari from Hari’s Corner who also guest blogs at The Untwisted Vortex is doing blog reviews for free there as well. I have found some great new blogs by reading their reviews – and that’s one side benefit of being reviewed, there are people reading this right now who found me via that review RT did. Hi ya’all, welcome!
Resolution Matters
If you are viewing my blog with your screen resolution set to 800×600, you have a vertical scroll bar at the bottom of your screen. My template width is 1000. That means there’s 200 extra pixels you have to scroll to see. In fact that is my entire right sidebar. Not a good look, right?
When I designed the template, I knew about this. I looked at my site stats and saw the majority of my readers (90%) were viewing the site in 1024×768 – which is becoming the new standard these days. It used to be 800×600 but as people change to LCD screens and larger screens they can’t use 800×600*. Unless they are my parents, in which case they will use 800×600 for everything because it makes the text bigger – they are too lazy to wear their glasses!
Make A Decision
So the first thing you need to do when considering a blog re-design is make a decision about resolution – and you need to take into account what your readers screen resolution is in order to do it. This means looking at your counter – bearing in mind counters are unreliable. 800×600 is one way you can go, 1024×768 gives you a lot more space.
If less than 85% of your readers use 800×600, you could go with 1024×768 but know that you run the risk of annoying people who use 800×600. On my site, they’ll miss out on seeing the right sidebar but they get the full main text and the left sidebar. That’s an OK compromise.
I found these excellent articles which are worth a read before you make the decision – How Tall and Wide Should I Design My Website? and also Understanding Monitor Resolution
Don’t Change
There is a blog I removed from both my reader and my links. The reason I removed it is simple. Each time I went to the blog, they were using a new template. They had changed it many, many times over the last couple of months. I feel like they are never going to make up their mind and stick with one template and frankly, I’m tired of watching the indecision in progress!
If you want to try out a new template don’t do it on your actual blog that readers visit. Test it out on a test blog first. Blogger makes this easy for you – you can have as many blogs as you want. Just be sure to remember **this blogging tip. When you are sure you’re happy with it, install it on your actual blog – and stick with that template for at least 2-6 months.
Change is Hard
People do not like change. We bloggers are constantly tweaking, moving things around, adding things, removing things, making new blocks in our sidebars. I am as guilty of this as the next blogger. I am not saying never change anything, I am saying keep in mind the impact it has on your readers.
Your readers may know where to find something right now. If you move it and they are looking for it, they will be frustrated unless they can easily see where you moved it to. If you feel the need for change (as I recently did with my sidebars) pick one day, post a note to your readers who may turn up mid-changes to “bear with me, I’m changing some things around”, mess with it till you have it as you like it, then let your regular readers know what you have changed or removed via a blog post.
Above The Fold.
The instant first impression a user has of your website is what loads onto their page that they can see without scrolling. This is called “above the fold” – you know those broadsheet newspapers which have a fold on the front page, about halfway down? They know what is above the fold is what people see – and why they buy the newspaper.
It is no different on your blog. Decide what you want people to know about you when they first look at your page, and put that above the fold.
Browser Matters
Most people only use one internet browser. It might be Internet Explorer. It might be Mozilla Firefox. These are the two main ones you will see on your site stats. Do you know how your site looks in the one you don’t use? Do you know how it looks in different versions of the one you don’t use? A lot of people don’t use the latest version of browsers – when they find a stable one they stick with it like super glue.
Do you know how it looks in the rarer browsers like Opera, etc? Make a blog post where you ask people using those browsers to take a screen shot for you. Your readers using those browsers will generally be happy to help out.
IE NetRenderer allows you to check how a website is “rendered” (how it looks) when using Internet Explorer – several versions of it. I am still looking for a version of this for Firefox. Anyone know where to find it?
Flashing is bad
People associate flashing things with advertisements, which are becoming more prevalent on all the websites we visit these days. For Firefox users, you can get an extension called Ad Block Plus – and let your inner self be at peace without ads interrupting your internet. For your personal blog, I do not recommend anything be flashing. It’s annoying to many people.
Template Blend
Blogger has a standard set of templates which people can use. It is easy to just pick one of those and leave it at that. You would be making a major mistake as a blogger if you did, though. Anyone else using that same template can be mistaken for you. It is sort of like walking into a room where everyone is wearing the same outfit. How do you find the people you know, among the apparent clones?
The least you should do is change some of the colors and the font – Sephy’s post will explain how to do that. You can check it out here – Demystifying Blogger Template Editing.
Good Templates Are Out There
I saw some lovely blogger templates the other day.. check these out.. which are very much more grown up than the blogger basic ones.. They look more like WordPress templates than Blogger ones.
Some of my faves from the Pannasmontata collection are -
number 23 – Maschere; number 29 – Lands (3 column); number 31 – Placide; number 33 – Onde; number 40 – Delfini; number 41 – Words At Sea (3 column); number 42 – Bonsai; number 57 – Abstract Thoughts (3 column); number 58 – Abstract Mind (3 column); number 71 – Frost; number 77 – Piercing; number 78 – Locked; number 83 – Cherrylicious; number 87 – Attention Please; number 93 – Tux Who?
Not Everyone Agrees.
Good design is not easy. There is no one size fits all. If there were, nobody would want it because all our blogs would look the same. As a blogger, what you need to do is make sure you are not turning off new readers by making bad design decisions. Unless you’re writing your blog just for your friends and family, who will love you regardless.
New readers won’t have a chance to love you. They’ll be leaving skid marks with their mouse in order to close your site as quickly as they can, and move on to another blog – where the content may not be half as good BUT they aren’t offended by the design, or the flashing ads, or the music that starts playing without them asking for it, or the myriad of other things you can get wrong as a blogger.
Further Reading –
15 Design Decisions That Annoy Readers – Some seriously annoying things that bloggers do are listed here – do YOU do any of them? I do – I need to look into that Google Ajax search box, adding it to my todo list for tomorrow.
45 Excellent Blog Designs – Inspirational stuff!
Things to Avoid: What Makes Me Nervous When Reading Your Blog – Blogger does not give our readers the chance to subscribe to comments, which is why I use co.mments myself. I don’t like to lose track of conversations I took part in.
Blog Design at ProBlogger – This is the category for Blog Design which contains quite a few useful food for thought posts.
Top 10 Weblog Design Mistakes – I disagree with number 2 – sometimes I think putting a photo of yourself on your blog is a terrible idea and some of the ones I have seen scare me greatly. Number 5 I think a lot of bloggers miss out on. Your top 5-10 posts should be shown above the fold – give readers the chance to access your best posts as soon as they land on your blog. You’ll note I have moved mine to be above the fold now.
Useful Things -
VisiBone Webmaster’s Color Lab – You can test colors against each other here.
Non-Dithering Colors – Gives an explanation of why the 216 color palette is better for use generally, and also all the color codes you may need.
HTML Goodies – Lots of HTML goodness to help any blogger.
Over to you
What are your thoughts on blog designs? Do you like yours? If not, do you want to change it? Do you need help to change it? Sephy is writing a companion post to this one which can help you with a few things.
If you liked this blog post, feel free to Stumble it. 
*Unless they are my parents, in which case they will use 800×600 for everything because it makes the text bigger – they are too lazy to wear their glasses! This drives both me and the other half absolutely up the wall. They have a wide screen laptop. I’ll take a photo of what a webpage looks on it for ya’all sometime, but in the meantime it looks bad. Trust me. It’s truly fingernails on a blackboard for your eyes.
**Cybercelt left me a great comment about that a while back, letting me know that you can go into your Blogger profile (on your profile page when you are signed in, click edit my profile, then Show my blogs, then Select blogs to display) and choose which blogs are displayed in your profile. If you have more than one, I suggest you choose one to be the main blog, and link to your other blogs from that blog page rather than have them all listed in your profile to make it easier for people to find you, but it’s your profile.
This week I have collected some fantastic links to articles about blogging. I have added them all to the Bloggers Are Helpful list – Is yours there? If not email me a link to it and I’ll add it next week.
Why does Snoskred refer to herself as Snoskred?
Yes, you may have noticed this here on the blog. If you look to one sidebar you’ll see things like Snoskred Loves, Snoskred Scambaits, Snoskred On The Web. In that sidebar the word Snoskred appears over 20 times.
Don’t I know who I am? Is there a danger I might forget if it’s not written everywhere? Or is there a deeper plan at work?
Google for the word I = 1 – 100 of about 3,560,000,000 for I
Google for the word Me = 1 – 100 of about 2,120,000,000 for Me
Google for the word Snoskred – 1 – 100 of about 28,200 for snoskred
I am the number one search result for Snoskred. How I got there is partly because of referring to myself in the third person. It is a useful “white hat” (ie not illegal or dodgy) way to get your blog higher up in the ranking for your name.
Everyone knows who I am. I use the name Snoskred everywhere I go. If someone were looking for me and wasn’t sure how to find me they can google.
On the other hand, the name Snoskred is very unusual. So it wasn’t exactly difficult to get up to the top on search engines for it.
Snoskred = Norwegian for Avalanche.
Yes, very suitable! The real word has the funny ø in it. I stopped using the ø some time ago when I found it was causing issues – plus everyone wanted to copy and paste the o because nobody knew how to make it – not even me!
Sometimes people spell it wrong (I have google alerts set up for the common mis-spellings, ie snoskerd, snosekrd, snosekred etc) or mistype, that’s fine. I don’t mind. Well I do a little, because I always take care to either copy and paste the name of fellow bloggers or triple check I got it right, but we all make mistakes, even me sometimes. But I do still want to be able to thank people when they refer to me even if they mis-spell it.
Advice For Newer Bloggers -
One of the biggest pieces of advice I would give to any new blogger would be – make an unusual (nick) name for yourself and then refer to yourself using that name everywhere you go. Google the word first, and make sure there’s not too many hits for it.
If you can’t find a name you like, try this fantastic resource I often used for finding names – http://www.babynamenetwork.com/ – scroll down a little to see browse names by origin and find a country or culture that appeals to you.
Blog Stuff -
I found so many great blogging articles this week I thought I would post it separate from the weekly wrap up.
What Everybody Ought to Know About Blogging – 97 Blog Tips – At the end of the 31 days there is going to be a fantastic collection of articles all together in one place. Is yours there? If not, submit it here. But be quick, time is almost up.
10 Lessons in Blogging Learned on a Shopping Expedition – I love to blog, and I love to shop.. Darren Rowse combines both into a smart blog article. If I didn’t have to pack it, I’d go shopping too!
Added to the Bloggers Are Helpful list this week -
Blog Basics –
Catch New Readers Up On The Basics of Your Blog – We have to remember not everyone has been with us from day one. Once a month it is worth doing a blog post which links (using good relevant keywords for the search engines) new readers back to a few posts from our past.
When you talk about something on your blog that happened previously, link back to the post where you mentioned it. Keep your readers in the loop, don’t expect them to psychically know, or to have read your entire archives. There just isn’t the hours in the day.
Search Engine Optimization For Yahoo – So many of us bloggers focus on Google but Google is not the only fish in the sea. An excellent article, Court!
Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – SEO – This is a must read for anyone wanting to get more traffic from search engines.
If Your Blog Disappeared, Who Would Miss It? – Ya’all would, right?
10 Traits Of Successful Bloggers – Lucky me, I have pretty much all of them. I do think the most important one is time management, followed by a positive attitude.
10 Tips for Increasing Comments on Your Blog – Excellent article, Thomas.
How do you link to yourself? Anchor Text for Internal Links Matters – This is important reading for all bloggers because it DOES matter. That’s one reason I put in the “Snoskred Is” section. It also matters when you link to other people, so keep it in mind.
Use smart keywords – I usually use the title of the post that the author used – to link to people – instead of writing this post, write “Meg from Dipping Into The Blogpond wrote this great post about Social Petworking“. Fellow bloggers will thank you greatly for it! It’s also a lot quicker, I just copy and paste the title and then link it.
Fresh Badge Generator – An easy way to make good looking badges. Great find!
Food For Thought -
Converting Visitors Into Subscribers – We all want more subscribers, but how do we convince those precious visitors to subscribe?
50 Tips to Unclutter Your Blog – I had to do this recently.
10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber – Reading the Bumpzee community feeds you can see the echo chamber effect in action sometimes.
Top 10 Sins of Blog Usability – I agree with all of these.
Thirteen Blog Clichés – I changed my mind on a few of the things I do on my blog after reading this one.
Things To Avoid Series – This is an excellent guide to what NOT to do when blogging.
Writing & Blogging -
20 Surefire Ways To Beat Writer’s Block – Feeling a little.. blocked? Try this to jumpstart your writing.
25 Blog Topics to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing – Great stuff Julie! Inspiring for any blogger.
Writing Kick-Ass Posts When You’re In A Rush – I often find if I have too much time I over-edit, so this was helpful for me.
Find Your Blogging Voice – Some good questions to ask yourself as a blogger.
Plan When You Post Before You Publish – Do you know what days are the most busy on your blog? Do you consider these things when you post?
The Almighty Dollars -
6 Reasons Why I DON’T Use Adsense on Most of My Sites – I’ve never used Adsense and I never will – they don’t pay enough. I’m worth more than that, Google. So is every other blogger.
101 Ways to Monetize Your Website or Blog – Some of these you may never have heard of before.
I hope my fellow bloggers reading this found something useful in the list above. Let me know in the comments if you did! And of course if you have any posts and articles about blogging to add to the bloggers are helpful section of the sidebar, please email me with a link or leave your link in the comments.
If you liked this post, feel free to Stumble it – and don’t forget to come back tomorrow for my article Blog Design – Open Your Eyes.
Recently I’ve been working on clearing out my Google Reader. I have gone from 215 subscriptions back to 143 – a huge drop. This is no easy task, but some bloggers have made it easy for me to make the decision – keep reading, or unsubscribe? Here’s some of the reasons why I have unsubscribed from some of the blogs.
Posts Too Long.
Writing one huge long post every week and posting rarely in between. There was one blog on my google reader, I kid you not, who would write posts averaging between 4,000 to 5,000 words once a week. Was it anything I could use? No. It was simply egotistical shyte where the blogger answered a whole bunch of questions other readers had asked – some of you may know the blog I mean..
Their last post in my reader was 5261 words, 28792 characters and just to give you an idea, I pasted it into word. It went for 15 pages. ONE POST!!!!!! And people say my posts are long, ya’all ain’t seen nothing yet! Just for comparison sake – this post is 2199 words long, 11276 characters and was four pages when I posted it into word.
I don’t mind a long post, if you have something useful and interesting to say. If you’re just pandering to your massive ego, I’m hitting unsubscribe.
Too Pithy.
Every post you wrote was three lines or less. Every. Single. One. I enjoy pith as much as the next person, but there is such a thing as too much pith. Give me some substance!
Where Are You?
Some of the blogs deleted last week had not been updated at all in over 6 months. Hello, you had people who were reading you and you went and blew it. Maybe you got busy. Maybe you got a life. Maybe you got hit by a bus. I don’t know, and now I’ll never know, because you just left me hanging. I’ve unsubscribed. Readers of this blog will be happy to know, if something happened to me I have a plan all ready to deal with it. You’ll never be left wondering here.
You Went Quiet.
You used to post regularly and I was loving it, but now I realise I haven’t heard from you in a couple of months – and your last post didn’t say “I’m going on holidays” “I’m taking a break from blogging” “I have to do (insert important thing) so you may not hear from me so much over the next few (length of time)”. If it did, I’d be ok waiting. Seriously. We all have lives to live.
They have a term for this with nuclear submarines – going quiet. Unless you happen to be living in one, it’s not a good idea to do it with your blog. Readers will unsubscribe – like I just did. Let people know if you’re going to be away for a bit. It’s a nice thing to do for your loyal readers.
You’re A Wanna-be.
I linked to you for at least 6 months and I told you I was linking to you via a comment. You never linked back. In your links list all I see are “a-list” bloggers. All you talk about is what the “a-list” bloggers are saying or doing. If I wanted to know what the “a-list” bloggers were saying or doing, I’d be reading them. I don’t read them. I wanted to read *you*, not some poor soul wishing they could be on the “a-list” and sucking up to the “a-list” bloggers in every post.
I’ll give that link to another blogger who deserves it more. Good luck getting the “a-list” bloggers to link back to you. Just a hint you might be able to use – if you annoy enough people who link to you, you won’t ever get to be an “a-list” blogger because regular non-a-list people won’t link to you or subscribe to your feed. Spread your link love around and base it on content, not what supposed list the blog is on.
I’m not feeling it.
In order for me to read your blog, I have to sometimes know what you are talking about. There is one blogger I deleted because they write these major in depth posts that read like a legal document. On a personal blog. There is never any personal posts, never any images and a lot of 50 cent words you only hear used in spelling bees.
If you’re writing like that on your personal blog, maybe you need to take a holiday. Relax. Not that I can’t handle in depth posts and legal wording but from time to time, chill out and have a laugh! Tell me something funny that happened to you. Lighten up.
I’m overwhelmed.
Some people post too much. Two to three posts a day is one thing. Four every day, you may be pushing it. 5-15 posts a day is way out of control. I want to know about you but not every single detail that happens in your life! Learn to edit. Write things and put them aside for a wrap up post, one longer post instead of 6 short little ones.
I’m writing this on Saturday the 18th of August. I’ve already posted three things today. Tomorrow I post one thought of the day and the weekly wrap up. The earliest this will be posted is Monday. That’s ok. My writing doesn’t have an expiration date. I know you’re not sitting at home waiting. You have a life. You have other blogs to read. So do I. Don’t pummel me with posts!
Your Content Went AWOL.
Some bloggers have got into paid posts so much that it is all they blog about anymore. I’m all about supporting a bloggers right to make money but if you aren’t providing non-paid content as well, you will lose your readers, and consequently find it harder to get paid blogging jobs. My personal rule is follow up a paid post with non paid content soon after posting the paid content, at least on the same day. If you’re doing that, give yourself a pat on the back.
Your Content Was Negative
Not one positive post in the whole time I’ve been reading you? All you want to do is whinge and you aren’t prepared to look at the positives in life? Sorry, that’s not for me. I prefer positive thought. Occasional snark is one thing, I can appreciate that. Being mad at the world 24/7/365? I’m feeling sorry for you and it’s depressing the heck out of me. Let me off this rollercoaster ride into negativity!
I’m Waiting.
One post a month? One post every two months? That’s all you can manage? Seriously? Are your readers so unimportant to you? You have nothing to say? You can’t find a news article to speak about? You got nothing? You can’t ask for guest posters? You’re too busy to have a blog. Seriously. I’m unable to deal with such long gaps between posts unless your content is *incredible*.
You Moved.
Without telling me more than once – and now I’ve lost that connection to you. Here’s a piece of advice for moving bloggers. Keep your old blog for at least a month. Once a week during that month, post a reminder that you have moved on your old blog. That’s for your feed readers, who may not have received the message the one time you sent it out. They may have hit “mark all as read” because there were 500 posts in one folder and they couldn’t face reading it.
Give your readers every possible chance to follow you. They are not expecting you to move and are unprepared for it. Me personally I’d be posting “I’ve moved here” once a week on that old blog for six to eight weeks.
You Were Cliquey.
Some bloggers just want their friends reading. They could make their blogs private so the rest of us don’t get attached and then hurt when they leave us out, ignore us and our comments, and refuse to link back to us.
Template Issues.
Every time I visited your site, you had a different template. And I visited your site a lot over the space of a few weeks, I told you how much I liked a couple of the templates but one day I got tired of the constant switching, things moving around.. it was just too much. Sorry. Your content was ok but not good enough to overcome the massive template indecision. Let me guess, you change clothes five times a day, right?
You Told Me You Were Quitting.
I understand, but I’ll miss you. In order to keep the blogroll alive, I’ve taken your link down but if you come back, I’ll put it up before I finish reading your first post saying you’re returning to blogging, I promise. Thank you so much for everything, I enjoyed your blogging.
But Wait A Minute?
Some of you may have read this list and thought “I do that” “Ouch, I’ve made that mistake” or even “I never realised how annoying that could be to my readers, I’ll never do it again!” If so, that is fantastic. It will make your blog even better – for me and for all your readers.
If your name is still over on that sidebar list of blogs I read via google reader, it means one of two things.
1. You are linking to me, which I deeply appreciate, thanks! I’ll never de-link you while you link to me. If I did it by accident please let me know. This job has been evil and I have been working on it for over a week now and still have not tracked down everyone linking to me.
2. I love you so much I can’t let you go. Even though you don’t link to me. It would be nice if you did, but I enjoy your writing and I’m giving you that link because of it. If you don’t enjoy mine, you probably shouldn’t be linking to me.
For 95% of the blogs listed there, it is both. There’s a few blogs over there doing a few of the above things, so perhaps take a moment to consider whether you are being considerate of your readers and mindful of what could make them unsubscribe from your feed.
Please note I read the Australian (and US) Blogs Community via RSS as one feed – if your blog is a part of that community I may not have listed it a second time in the list of blogs I read via google reader. If I listed it twice, that is my mistake but extra link love for you..
My Future Policy
Things have to change here because I can’t face doing this job once every six months, and I don’t have the time to be constantly updating this list. So here’s my thoughts on a good compromise. Some of you reading this may want to try the same thing, or publish your future policy so all your readers can be aware of it..
1. If I like your blog, I am going to add it to a folder in my reader called “new”. I will also add it to a block on the sidebar called “New Blogs I like”.
2. I will list your blog in the weekly wrap up when I add you.
3. I will comment and let you know I did this.
4. Once every 3-6 months, I will review this folder.
5. Blogs I have come to love will be added in to the main “Blogs I read with google reader” list.
6. Blogs that have linked back to me will be added in to the main “Blogs I read with google reader” list. There’s an easy way to make sure I keep linking to you right there. I’ll never de-link you while you link to me.
7. Blogs I didn’t feel that connection with will be removed from the reader and the sidebar.
Further Reading
This post is now accompanied by a post from Sephy with a lot of how-to info on RSS feeds. He’s great at taking the tech out of technical things so non technical people like me can understand them. Make sure to read it!. You may also want to have a look at these useful articles -
Over To You.
What are your thoughts? What is your policy on linking to blogs? Do you struggle with who you should give the link love to? Do you feel bad or rejected when people don’t link back to you? What about when people delete their link to you? Do you have blogs you’re hanging on to which you would love to delete?
Snoskred = 32, Female, lives in NSW with The Other Half and two kitties. This blog explores various topics including life, scams, scam baiting, music, movies, art and photography. You never know what Snoskred will write about next, so securely fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride. more about »
