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	September 1, 2003

NEW VO NOW OUT The new edition of Virtual Occoquan is now online. Some of the best writing on the blogosphere all in one place. Plus, this week, spam satire contest winners. Check it out! 11:57:41 AM  trackback []  comment []

GOOD WEBLOG DESIGN AND LAYOUT A lot has been written about how to write good blog content, and about what's wrong with and missing from current weblog tools. But here are some things you can do to make the most of the existing tools, and to make your blog easy to navigate and an aesthetic pleasure to read. The key is to appreciate the limitations of the medium: the web page and the screen. Use Titles: Almost all blog tools allow titles for each post, and they're invaluable for readers who browse dozens of blogs every day. Make the title clever if you can, or must, but first and foremost make it clear what the post is about. And make it stand out like a real headline: Use a larger font size than you use for the body of the post, or at least use bold face. Example: Xian Crumlish's Radio Free Blogistan -- big, coloured, clear titles, and use of a 1-by-1 table with a different background colour to further set off each post. [Added Sept.2: Christian actually uses CSS style rather than a 1-by-1 table, but the effect is the same, and tables are easier for us non-techies]. Filchyboy also has distinctive, prominent titles. Abstract Long Posts: If your post is significantly longer than one screen, consider writing a one- or two-sentence abstract summarizing the thesis of the post. This is especially important if the first couple of sentences of your post can't or don't serve this purpose. Example: I decided I needed an abstract for my post on The Blogging Process because my post had two separate and ambitious goals, and I didn't want the audience for the second to stop reading too early. It turned out to be one of my most popular posts, as much for the second half (how blogging tools need to be improved to enable conversation) as for the first (a detailed chart of my blogging process). Use a Teaser Paragraph for Long Posts: If you don't like writing abstracts, pick the most important paragraph or two of the post, and just post that much on your main blog. Append a hotlink saying [more] or [whole article] to link the reader to the whole post. That way your readers can see more than just the one long article on your page, and can decide if they want to read the rest. This is an old newspaper trick "(continued on page A3)" but it conserves real estate. Example: Mark Woods' Woods Lot -- this guy posts volumes every day, most of it worth reading in full, but if he put the whole thing on his main blog page it would run a mile long and be unmanageable. Select a Readable Font, Size & Column Width: Depending on line spacing, a column width over five inches can be a challenge to read without losing your place. A font size smaller than 9 point is hard to read online, especially for older readers, and a font size larger than 12 point is extravagent use of screen space. Serif-type fonts are slightly easier to read in small-point sizes, but most blogs default to sans-serif fonts. Example: Caterina.net is elegantly readable, with a clean, simple layout. She also uses a coloured background to set off quotes, instead of using hard-to-read italics. If You're a 'Linker', Add Something of Value: While well-selected links themselves are valuable, they're even more valuable if you add a synopsis or analysis. A synopsis helps the reader decide whether it's worth clicking the link. Analysis adds interpretation and either information or entertainment value, and tells the reader 'what does this mean'. The best linkers can précis or selectively extract from the articles they link to so well you don't even need to read them. Example: Monster Limo weblogger Consider Arms comments on five (usually important) news stories each day so cleverly and succinctly that reading the actual article is anti-climactic. Give Readers Someplace to Go for More: If a reader finds your post enjoyable or important, s/he will want to read more. You can provide this through related links (either in the body or the end of the post), through the use of categories (though see point 8 below), a blog table of contents, a list of recent posts, or a self-selected archive of your best posts. Example: Terry Frazier's b.cognosco has excellent related posts lists and also gives you filtered Google links on the subject of each post. Use Graphics If They Add Something: Endless rows of text can be numbing, but irrelevant graphics can be distracting. Abstract 'icons' and clipart are usually cryptic and not helpful for identifying posts of interest. Photos of people or places you're writing about are helpful. Original graphics, especially if they make a powerful point, are best of all. Example: Gary Lawrence Murphy's Teledyn blog has superb photos, professionally laid out, and either highly relevant to the subject of the post or just plain stunning, like the photo of today's Kelowna fire, taken from his site, that illustrates this post. Use Categories Only If They Help Your Readers: Their main value is to allow people to subscribe to only one category of your blog. That's only useful if (like me) you write about a wide variety of topics, and you know some readers are not going to be interested in all your posts. I have eight categories, of which six (listed top left) appear on my main How to Save the World blog and the other two are private (one for my employer and the other for fellow high-school alumni). I could probably get by with only two public categories: 'All' and 'Business', since I know of about fifty readers who are interested only in my business posts. If you use categories just to organize your posts for your own purposes, it's probably not worthwhile listing the categories on your blog, and you'll do everyone a favour by turning off separate notification of your category posts to Weblogs.com and other blog post logging servers. Use Outlining 'Twisties' Cautiously: Lotus Notes users are very familiar with the pros and cons of those little triangular 'twisties' that can be 'expanded' or 'collapsed' individually (by clicking on the 'twistie') or globally. Experienced users know they're best used to hide 'for further information' content (appendices, supplements) so you can see the organization of an entire article in one glance. Some bloggers use an outlining tool called Active Renderer extensively (see Jim McGee's Musings, for example). If I took the time to learn how to use it on my blog, I might use it for the stuff on my sidebars (blogroll, tables of contents, recent posts, signature posts, right-hand 'Vectors & Tangents' sidebar). But I doubt I'd use it for the main posts. I think abstracts (point 2 above) and teaser paragraphs (point 3 above) are more effective ways to conserve real estate, though if I could use a twistie to 'hide' the rest of the text after the teaser paragraphs I might do that. It's that mandatory extra click that bugs me. I recently read a German language blog that expands the full text when you simply move your cursor over the heading, but that technology is beyond me, and I suspect most of us, at present. I have no design and layout advice for either sidebars or blogrolls. There seem to be no accepted standards or best practices for either. Some A-listers have enormously popular sidebars (see this one by Anil Dash for example) even though I find them cryptic. Some bloggers use sidebars as 'remainders', items they think are worth a look but not a lot of discussion. That makes sense except for most blog tools there is no place for comments on them and no way to automatically archive them, so they can grow immense like Caterina's. Same thing with blogrolls. Some people have very small ones, or favourite 'sub-blogrolls' with only a few 'must-read' blogs listed ahead of all the rest. Others have hundreds of blogs in their blogrolls, sometimes organized, often not. Small blogrolls are usually intended to help readers who like the blog to find others of similar quality, focus or community. Large blogrolls seem more likely intended for use by the blog owner to organize his/her own reading (I confess that's what mine is for). [Added Sept.2nd: Annotated blogrolls like Progressive Gold's are especially helpful, but quite rare]. Clearly the smaller and better organized the blogroll, the more valuable it is to those listed as a means of getting traffic to their own blogs. But I'm listed on about 200 blogrolls, and get very little traffic from them, and most of what I get is from the blog owners themselves. I get far more hits from mentions in blog posts (until they pass into archives) than from the more permanent blogrolls. And some very successful bloggers have no blogroll at all. As with any communication medium, content always trumps design. Some very popular bloggers have execrable blog layouts, and some beautifully designed blogs are both content- and reader-free. Nevertheless, every publisher has a duty to his/her audience to make the reading experience as pleasant and productive as possible. The above hints may help in that task. I'm sure readers of this article will have many more ideas, so be sure to read the comments to this post at least as carefully as the article itself. This blog in particular could certainly use some improvement. 10:46:57 AM  trackback []  comment []

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