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Though I agree with most of your points, I have to say that this post is directed to people wanting high visibility among only this web-design community only looking for design culture and tech tips in their web reading.

There’s quite a few “great” web logs that speak at length about their depression, poop, and hell, cats and their babies (www.dooce.com, anyone?) And for example, www.vacant.cc which had been a Blogger highlighted blog, is from a teenager and gets tons of repeat visits. Both the blogs I just mentioned are immensely personal with tons of pictures of themselves with their friends, family, etc. And yet, they have some of the highest visibilities out there? And people keep coming back for more?

Why? Because, really, after all the design talk is done, we’re all human. And sometimes, it’s the way they EXPRESS their depression, whinings, and exhibitionism. People ARE interested in some people’s lives. Even strangers. That’s why there was, like 100 comments at Hick’s Design’s journal when he posted a simple picture of his daughter holding a PHP book. We LIKE cute pictures of his baby on top of his amazing design advice and prowess.

Anyway, since this is your post with your personal list of preferences, I just wanted to throw in a little “alternate viewpoint” to stir the pot. :-)

Good write-up, Jon - I agree, by and large.

Lea - some of the blogs that were mentioned, such as Dunstan’s, now very rarely feature tech tips; he mostly writes about his observations on life in America and The Girlfriend.

I agree that blogs like Dooce and others are great to read, but if I started adding non-design blogs into my daily read lists I’d never get any work done (the only one there at the moment is Bluishorange - luckily she only updates every week or so).

Agree with you on most points, and agree with Lea too.

While I personally despise photos of kittens and their hairballs, they do serve a purpose.

After all, what is a weblog? A weblog is a personal log of the person writing it. Like everyones life, it’s the sum of their experiences, good and bad. It is the value of their Karma, it’s their scars and their smiles. Okay maybe that’s only the good weblogs, but still — it does allow for photos of kittens, and/or long tedious depressing writeups.

So while I do understand your stance on this, I think you’re perhaps going into too many details there. After all, I’m proud to know I’m still on your blogroll after your update, and not all my postings have been too happy after this election.

On some of your other points, I would like to comment on the design of the weblog. Design, to me, is also to consider usability and information architecture. Design is not just a good logo, some worn textures and gradients, it’s about making the right text size, making the right post width, having the right linedistance, showing relevant information (only!), and generally structuring the website for ease of use, and ease of reading. This is, in my honest opinion, at the very core of a good design. After all, there are sooo many worn websites with drop shadows out there — clearly everyone knows how to do it. But truly, the few websites we can all agree have a great “look”, are those who paid attention to detail.

With that said, I do subscribe to a bunch of blogs that are less well-designed (well-designed meeting the criteria said above) — because their content is bloody interesting! In these cases, I just don’t move outside the feed reader.

In other words, design does play a part in it, for me, and I think - for you too.

In retrospect, I made several mistakes with this article. First of all, I think the title of the document was poorly chosen: “What Makes a Great Weblog?” is very generic and I realise that it’s very misleading. A more appropriate title might have been, “Auditing My Blogroll” or, perhaps, “Blogroll Selection Criteria”.

Having reread the article a couple of times, I have recognised another glaring omission: In the section entitled “Turn Offs”, I failed to make it clear that the turn offs are mine. They were not meant as general rules/guidelines for all weblogs.

I have to say that this post is directed to people wanting high visibility among only this web-design community only looking for design culture and tech tips in their web reading.

That certainly wasn’t my intention Lea. The article wasn’t aimed at any specific niche. As I wrote above, it is merely a justification/explanation of the decision process I used to reorganise my blogroll. Quoting from the second paragraph of my article:

I tidied up my blogroll today. I removed some websites and added others. The auditing process was easy. A cursory review of each existing website was all I needed in order to determine which should stay and which should go. But how did I make my decisions? What qualities did I admire in the websites I had chosen?

In order to get this in the right perspective, you have to examine the weblogs I subscribe to. In the vast majority of cases, I lean towards technical weblogs (for personal and professional reasons) and web-design weblogs (for professional reasons). There are also one or two weblogs on my blogroll that are neither technical nor design related. These are the weblogs I read because I enjoy the content and/or respect the opinion of the author.

Joen (I’m picking on you since you commented here), yours is one of those websites - neither technical nor design oriented. Yet I read every one of your posts and browse through each of your “installments”. I do this because I like the content that you produce. I’ve also found, whilst participating in comments both here and on Noscope that I enjoy conversing with you. It seems to me that we have much in common, so you’re in my blogroll.

On the other hand, I used to list Dunstan Orchard in my blogroll for similar reasons. Recently however, I’ve found that Dunstan’s writing has moved in a different direction than the one I previously enjoyed. I find that his content no longer interests me, so I have removed his website from the blogroll.

I stress that this is nothing personal, I still hold Dunstan in the highest regard, but I have a limited amount of time for blogging. So I have to be ruthless, and honest with myself.

It’s worth reiterating (despite your comments to the contrary Joen), that design, web-standards, accessibility, et al have had no conscious bearing on this audit. My selections have been made based on content, and content alone.

Now that that’s all covered (to your collective satisfaction hopefully), I’m going to return to those “Turn Offs”. I want to expand on my original article a little here, so that there are no misunderstandings.

1. Cats have their place. Many people have written to me and stressed that the weblog is, by definition, a personal medium. For many, the weblog is the equivalent of a diary or journal. As such, a weblog is an expression of one’s self. If your cat is precious to you, you will write about it. I hope that you can appreciate that I wasn’t criticising cat lovers, nor their writings. I was simply trying to lightheartedly suggest that (in my opinion) cat posts are not really appropriate within the (mostly) technical journals I subscribe to. However, it’s your weblog, I respect your right to publish what you wish (as I do, here on the Urban Mainframe).
2. It was insensitive of me to target depression in my article. I realise that, when someone is depressed, the support they can receive via their weblogs is comforting and gratefully accepted. I apologise if I offended anyone with my comments.
3. I’m still not going to buy anything from your wishlist! :-)

I don't think there's any need to consider re-titling the entry - aside from being your own personal point-of-view, it stands on its own as a well-thought-out critical assessment of what makes a successful blog; in some ways a better assessment than other recent ones that have solely focused on 'content' - you rightfully acknowledge that loading speed, credibility credibility, community and utility all have their part to play.

Like you implied, the “Turn Offs” then become irrelevant and merely a matter of personal taste.

NOTE: This comment has been edited by its author! Additions are shown in italics, deletions with a strike-through.

I like the title of the article. I think that the points you lay out are well-thought out, and could be pretty well applied to any blog that might be interesting to a reader that is outside of a given blogger’s circle of friends and family.

Very nice work, in my always humble opinion.

I wouldn’t retitle the article as it is now a matter of record. However, I will certainly take more care with my titles in future.

Lesson learned!

What I’d like to see done more in weblogs…

1. Move those damn links to a sideblog/sidebar/secondary listing. I really don’t like it when content is mixed with “heyISawThisPictureOfBushWithAHugeDildoUpHisAss AndLookHowCuteHeIsIThinkIraqWusTheRightThingToDo GulpGulp!” and my RSS client keeps poping up with updates because the 100th person likes Roger Johansson’s article on quoting.
2. Loose those default templates. Our gracious host here might not care, but I do. Without a hint of visual identity all blogspot.com sites look the same to be, regardless if you’re discussing Baudelaire or Britney Spears. If you don’t design sites, you can get alternative free templates in many places.
3. Trackbacking my site with invalid HTML (never mind XHTML) will get you on my TO_MURDER list. Sad, but true. I’m an anal-validation-freak and if you DO ping, take care what you send.
4. Be consistent. If you need to do something widely different it would perhaps make more sense to have a spin-off project/site (vis-a-vis Mr. Orchard’s recent foray into photography)
5. Speak your mind, in your own word, even if you know you’ll go to far. If there’s one place where you can go to far, that’s your blog. I for one say the most outrageous things on mine, just because I get to edit and publish an uncesored version of my thoughts… try it. Appologist don’t deserve blogs. :-)

I agree with your turnoffs 1 & 3. Depression doesn’t bother me so much, I think it can good for people to get it out in the open. I’ll tell you why I agree, though

For me, blogs are a source of information I can’t get anywhere else. ‘I need the info’, but that is all I want. I want to hear about how Dunstan Orchard has programmed his site, but I don’t care about a photo of some fat kid at a football match. I want to know when Eric Meyer releases the next version of his S5 project, but I have no interest in how he is progressing with the stages of getting there, let alone a desire to caption pictures of Bush and others

I can understand that all of these things might be interesting to others, or that some folks might only be interested in the photos. Everyone has their own preferences and interests

That’s why I’ve been thinking about a way to customise RSS feeds. It can’t be too hard, right? I don’t have a blog, and I don’t particularly want one, but I think I’ll be implementing that idea in a CMS sooner rather than later

If I can select ‘technical’, ‘design’ and ‘programming’ topics for my feed from someone’s site, then I’ll receive less material that I’m not interested in. Surely a good thing?

I’m glad to know it’s not just me who’s not really digging Dunstan’s current writings. Gabriel and Lachlan, as I see it, you’re both indicating a preference for some sort of categorisation or filtering.

I’ve been wanting to implement such a system on the Urban Mainframe for some time. I even wrote about it (Delivering RSS Feeds).

I’m as guilty as others of writing about a variety of topics and I know, as a frustrated reader of other weblogs, just how irritating it can be.

So I want to add categories to my weblog. Then I can prefix the titles in my RSS with the category. Something like:

• [PERL] An Introduction to Multi-dimensional Arrays
• [HUMOUR] Christmas Jokes
• [OPINION] Tony Blair is a Jerk

Once I’ve implemented this, you’ll be able to easily choose which articles you want to read when they drop into your RSS reader.

The benefits are many:

• You don’t waste time clicking through to articles that are of no interest to you
• You can set up client-side filtering/sorting
• I don’t lose readers when I suddenly start posting stories about my kids instead of how I added the latest widget to the Urban Mainframe

I think this system would work quite nicely. What do you think?

Note: I intend to work on this over the Christmas holidays, don’t expect to see it before.

As far as I’m concerned that is the minimum that anyone with an RSS feed should do (note that as I said above, I don’t have one ;)) However, given how few people do so, I’d be happy with that

What I was really talking about though is a dynamic feed. I click on the RSS link on your site and it takes me to a page that details what the hell RSS (there are still so many who don’t know!) and gives me a bunch of boxes to tick. Just like a newsletter subscription to TechRepublic or Internet.com or some other stupidly commercial and generally useless site. I then select which topics interest me and it generates a URL that will deliver my specific feed. I subscribe to that feed and I’m very happy

As a bit of a side note, this is why Orchard’s recent change in style hits me. For my money, he and you (Jon) are the only people out there who are really pushing the typical features of sites beyond what has become the norm. I love that I can actually OFFICIALLY become a member of the community of this site by registering. I love the editing of comments and the stylish implementation of it. Then Dunstan has the Commentators page and the other meta searches (People and Domains). His blogroll is also chock-full of unusual, unexpected and damned useful functionality that I’ve never seen anyone else go to the trouble of implementing

PS In tracking down the links for that paragraph I realised that the change I refer to is hardly ‘recent’. Dunstan Orchard hasn’t published anything that interested me much since his redesign in July. If I want to look at his photos, I’ll go to his photo site - as I do every couple of months or so, but I digress…

What I was really talking about though is a dynamic feed. I click on the RSS link on your site and it takes me to a page that details what the hell RSS (there are still so many who don’t know!) and gives me a bunch of boxes to tick. Just like a newsletter subscription to TechRepublic or Internet.com or some other stupidly commercial and generally useless site. I then select which topics interest me and it generates a URL that will deliver my specific feed. I subscribe to that feed and I’m very happy.

That’s a brilliant idea Lachlan, absolutely brilliant. In fact, it’s so damn good that that’s what I’m going to implement (I’ll credit you).

As I wrote earlier, this won’t be implemented (probably) until Christmas(ish) - but I’ll get there. Leave it with me.

I love that I can actually OFFICIALLY become a member of the community of this site by registering.

I’m glad you like it. While I haven’t done too much with it yet, I have a lot of plans for “benefits” registered users will enjoy. Watch this space.

Then Dunstan has the Commentators page and the other meta searches (People and Domains).

How on earth did I miss those? This is the kind of thing I admire Dunstan for. I could implement a “Commentator” meta search very quickly, but Dunstan’s really pushing the envelope with “People” and “Domains”. I’m very impressed. Thanks for the heads up Lachlan.

Dunstan Orchard hasn’t published anything that interested me much since his redesign in July.

I know. I feel the same way. It’s a shame because the man has a knack for innovation and is great at documenting his work. I hope that, one day, he gets back to the kind of work we both admire (but not until I’ve caught up to him).

really pushing the typical features of sites beyond what has become the norm

I’m trying. From a purely intellectual point of view, I love the challenge of developing new features. But I can’t think of everything, that’s why I’m so delighted to receive this kind of feedback. Thanks to your “itch”, I’m going to end up putting together a great RSS handler! :-)

Aww, shucks, thanks, Jon!

My problem is that I really need to actually finish some of these ideas myself. I implemented Gravatars for a little CMS a few months ago (August?). Then never got around to actually using them. Now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon in the last few weeks and my CMS still isn’t in use

Meanwhile I’ve been thinking about this RSS idea for months and never got around to coding any of it

So, in an endeavour to force myself to actually complete something that I’m not getting paid for (yet) I declare a race! I’ll try and implement this thing by New Year. And then we can laugh at each other’s implementations and hopefully get some ideas to improve it further

Lachlan, I accept your challenge! :-)

What language are you coding in?

For the most part i didn’t agree with your statements. If you read mostly technical and web-designed blogs for professional reasons, i would assume atleast you’re interested if they are written according to the standards. I still believe a professional designer needs to have his site designed according to them. And for the other blogs, all content is free game: they are indeed something deeply personal for most of the writers and i can’t help but having the feeling that the more personal they are, the more hits they get.

I know that they are your own personal opinions Jonathan, but the first impression somebody gets from reading this post is that you generalise the whole concept :-)

Okay, Jon, I know I’m going to regret this, but you’re on!

These days I code in a mish-mash of ASP.Net and ASP 3.0. I mix them to avoid some of the standards-related coding issues with .Net

I’m gradually moving more and more towards pure ASP.Net as I learn more about how to get around the problems

I know, I know. I’m a standards-heathen. Probably some obscure form of devil spawn

If you read mostly technical and web-designed blogs for professional reasons, i would assume atleast you’re interested if they are written according to the standards. I still believe a professional designer needs to have his site designed according to them.

You’re probably right Luc. But I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a “professional designer”.

I know I’m going to regret this, but you’re on!

Okay! :-)

Oh i didn’t say you were a professional designer, i was talking about the ones you visit for professional reasons: web-design blogs. I mean those designers ;-)

I got it Luc. :-)

Jonathan,

I’d like to have followed up more indepthly to my reply here, but time hasn’t allowed it yet, suffice to say I got a great larf of your article, and forgot to mention that. I don’t think it is fundamentally flawed, and doesn’t need neither retitling nor re-editing. Just so I got that through.

As for RSS feeds with titles, instead of using [HUMOUR] in the Title of your RSS feed, you could place that in the “Subject” of each RSS entry. I’m noticing Slashdot does that — that is, both a subject and a title. For instance: Title: “Lying makes the brain work harder” Subject: biotech

That’s a good idea Joen. I am going to go for customisable feeds (see: #12) and “Subject” would compliment such a system perfectly (are you listening Lachlan?).

Thanks for the pointer.

As a sidenote, Dunstan’s been recruited by Apple Computer, Inc. Hopefully this will mean we’ll start to see more of the Dunstan posts we all know and love and less of the photography. He might even make it back onto the blogroll!

are you listening Lachlan?

Absolutely. Got to keep an ear on the opposition, eh?

I was thinking I would use ‘Subject’ as well. My reader (RSS Bandit) calls it ‘Topic’, but hardly any RSS feeds seem to actually use it - another of my pet RSS peeves

And, of course, we have to come up with way to deal with topics/subjects that have been created since that feed was subscribed to…

Lachlan: Do you want to collaborate on this project? I have a couple of ideas…

Sure thing. That neatly gets me off the hook of programming the damn thing… Well, maybe not, but drop me a line at lachlan.hardy@gmail.com and we can talk turkey or even RSS