Successful Blogs

I’m catching up with Jakob Nielsen’s :: ALERTBOX :: which, if you don’t subscribe, you need to.

Nielsen has been at this usability game for years now, and much of what he says makes sense. However, I find his scope sometimes a little narrow, and his opinions a little blinkered.

For instance, this latest alertbox Nielsen states that online content is no good for learning and for in-depth reading. He states:

People arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to push. Banner blindness is only the most extreme manifestation of this selfishness.

That idea has some merit, but totally ignores the committed reader. Of course, some online content readers will arrive from a search engine hyperlink, looking for specific information. But quality content providers will engender a committed readership, who will arrive through an email / newsletter link, or via a ‘Favourite’ or ‘Bookmark’ link to the site’s home page.

This doesn’t mean that you, as content creator, can be lazy, obscure, rambling and inarticulate. But you can also indulge yourself a little, safe in the knowledge that your regular readers will have pulled up a chair, poured a glass of wine, and will look forward to reading your content, as opposed to skimming.

Well, we’re back up, and probably much like we were before.

What happened? I doubt whether anyone really missed us while we were away, but we had a bit of a problem with the site. What happened is that someone broke into the multiuser part of the site, created their own account, their own blog, and screwed up our front page. Fortunately, the database wasn’t corrupted, so although I tried to fix whatever was wrong, in the end I uploaded a new version of Wordpress, ‘upgraded’ with the very simple instructions, and we’re back online.

Actually, there is a bit of a difference. I don’t know what it is, but the site looks a bit different to how it did before, on account of me not having a backup of the php and css files. I know, I know, I shouldn’t edit the files directly, and if I do, I should download them so I have a backup. Silly, silly me. Lesson learned.

So, the site has had a little rest, my typing fingers have been recharged, and we’re alive and kicking.

Or - tabs, tabs and more tabs

Jakob Nielsen is king of usabilty, or so he would have people believe. Certainly, he’s been preaching it a long time, and arguably could be said to have invented the term in the first place.

I read all of his stuff as it comes out, and sometimes, I find his opinions, like his website, are too fixed following the mantra that he has created. Usability above all – who cares what it looks like (at least, that’s how it reads to me and a number of my webdesign friends). Webdesign and blogging has moved forward, and designers understand a great deal more about the usability of a web presence these days than when he started.

His latest alertbox, however, had me nodding in agreement with almost everything he said. Have a read of it, and then come back to me.

Read it? What did you think? Did it make sense?

The thing about his article was that so much concerned the almost minutiae of the webdesign. For instance, I didn’t understand the difference between sentence case (as recommended by Microsoft’s Vista user experience) and title-style capitalization as supported by Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (who, let’s face it, did more to bring a GUI to the mass market than a whole army of Bill Gates’s). If these two ideas still leave you cold, go back and read the article. I caught you skimming, didn’t I?

I’ve always liked tabs for navigating between differing sections of a website. They’re a convenient way of presenting lots of content within the same visual experience, ensuring consistency across the website. And I know, some have looked pretty good, and easy to understand, and there have been others which have been just damned awful.

Nielsen makes some excellent points, especially point 10 (only one row of tabs – anyone used to wrestling with the innermost workings of Windows knows what this means) and point 11 (tabs at the top – have you seen those sites with tabs down the side, or even along the bottom? Stupid or what?). But, as always, he makes one point which makes my hackles rise, which is point 1 – tabs should be used to select differing content within the same context, and not to select differing types of content, and he quotes Amazon as having made “that mistake”.

Hold on there a bit, Jakob. Usability is about the users ability to navigate the website in front of them logically and quickly. I (and many others) find the arrangement of a set of horizontal tabs to quickly and easily find the section of the site we’re interested in is a perfectly viable solution. And Amazon almost break ‘rule’ 10 too – the one about only having a single row of tabs. Amazon feature a second navigation row, context sensitive, under the tabs. So in small area of screen real estate, all of the major and minor categories in Amazon’s huge stock can be shown. And this, to me, is a triumph of webdesign, and if Mr. Nielsen doesn’t like it, that’s his prerogative. It works for me, and for many millions of Amazon customers.

I don’t know if everyone suffers from this, but it’s been four days since I got back from my summer holiday, and I just can’t get back into the swing of work and, more importantly, blogging.

The first problem comes on my return to work. I turn on the PC, enter my user name, and tab to the password box, and then stop. What is my password? My mind is a blank, and I have to resort to looking it up in a secure area of the server (yes, I’ve had this problem before!)

I was talking to someone about this a few weeks ago, and he called it muscle memory. With very repetitive tasks, you don’t need to think about how you do them - you just do them. Obviously, the muscles don’t have a memory, it’s the motor function area of the brain that remembers, together with your subconscious. If you drive a car with a manual gearbox, do you have to think where the gears are? No. If a dog runs out in front of you as you’re driving along, do you need to think about braking? Of course not, your foot goes to the pedal without you thinking. If you had to think about it (or even worse, if I had to think about it), the dog would be under your wheels.

So much of my life seems to have changed since I spent three weeks in Europe. I don’t know if it’s the change of scenery (our holiday destination was far more beautiful than our home town), change of lifestyle (no alarm clock makes a big difference), or just a change in time zone (I know, it’s only 1 hour, but you never know).

I don’t watch the same programs on TV any more. The daily and weekly programs which were the centrepiece of my social time hold no interest for me. I can’t get back into action on the online forum I held to moderate. I read posts, but rarely comment or take positive action. Blogging? Who has time for that?

Well, obviously I do. I’ve just written this blog post, and I’m back into the swing!

So, writers’ block? It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) exist. Got nothing to write about? Write about writers’ block.

I’ve written my second guest post at Earners Forum. It concerns some detailed analysis of the design of websites and blogs, in order to enrich your viewers’ experience. You can find it at

The Eyes Have It

Have a wander over there, and read it. it’s actually quite good

Incidentally, I noticed I had a trackback from Garantat.net. I wandered over to have a look, and was quite flushed to see that I was sharing the page with such worthies as Problogger, Copyblogger, and Daily Blog Tips. All this, and under the subtitle of “Wisdom of the Blogosphere”. How good am I?

My first guest post at Earner’s Forum is up:

When Content Isn’t King

I really enjoyed writing it, although I spent a lot of time editing and re-editing, so that it was as good as it can get.

Pop over there, and have a look around the site.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist this.

I was looking through the excellent Top 10 best designed blogs this morning, and one of the comments suggested we looked at Thumblounge. So, of course, I did.

Only when I got there, I got this:

So I checked the SixApart status.

And I got this:

So, which is it? Available, or unavailable. And what’s “scheduled maintenance” anyway? Why do you have to take down the whole blog support network all at once?

I’m glad my blogs are self-hosted.

I’ve been messing about with blogs again. No surprise there.

But it looks like I’ve got to ditch at least one of my blogs. Maybe more. I’ve just read The Dangers of Too Many Sites, amongst other posts, and I think it’s time to prune.

I’ve started the Pro Blogging Community, which is taking a bit of my time up. See the cute button to the right. It may be that ProBlogCo becomes the main destination for all of my blogging efforts. I don’t know.

There’s our personal site, which is a sort of diary come affiliate site, and I’ll keep that for posterity.

Motorhome Essentials is actually doing quite well, and I’m deffo going to keep that one.

Sub-notebook computing is good and fun, but I can’t really decide what it’s supposed to be about. The idea was that it would be a popular (or even populist) blog, about geeky things, but I haven’t got the time to update it, and I can’t find the niche it’s supposed to operate in. I’m really interested in the products, but I suspect I may be one of only a few. I don’t want to drop into the mobile phone sector, ‘cos it’s really crowded. The Ultra Mobile PC sector is too small, and has an uncertain future. Smartphones? Maybe, but what’s the definition of a smartphone? There’s too many blurred lines between the product groups, and there’s too much going on to write about everything. So this one looks like it’s for the chop.

The Property Essentials blog is (again) an area I’m personally very interested in, but am I really active enough to support it?

I think the worst one for my update count (and how quickly it should be updated) is Successful Sites. I think I’ll ditch that one too, and keep it for the webdesign / blogdesign website. Or something.

So, now we have a cleaner, stripped down network. And I’ll keep it updated often. Honest.

COMOTIZED

Visual impressions.
First impressions are vitally important. As a blogger, you have a few seconds (at most) to grab your reader’s attention, and get them to read your content. The name is interesting, and makes me want to read what it’s all about.

The background and content colours are very easy on the eye, and the site is initially appealing. The central section of the blog is optimised for 800 X 600 pixels, and would suit a number of browser resolutions.

Design
The content is high up on the page, well above the fold, which I think is important. My one criticism of the layout is that the date font is much bigger and bolder than the post title. The animated quilting bee, although small, is a little distracting. The RSS feed button is very visible, which is good. The header graphic is good quality, and blends in well with the rest of the design. It also changes with each reload, which is a nice feature.

The sidebar, although busy, is neat and fits in with the rest of the site. I personally don’t like calendars, because it shows how often you’re posting, which may not be a good thing. One thing I noticed is that there is no access to post archives, other than through the calendar. I would prefer a standard Wordpress Archive list to the calendar. Sometime after looking at the blog, I found the page numbers along the bottom. It would be better to feature this more prominently at the top of the page.

All posts have tags in certain categories, although there is no category list in the sidebar, which would help visitors read those posts that interest them.

The use of static pages in Wordpress, and the good use of a horizontal navigation bar just under the header, transforms this blog into a more of a traditional website.

Content
The blog content is well-written, in an informal style which most bloggers employ. The subject matter is an eclectic mix of personal journal, lifestyle observation, and blogging discussion. Sometimes, this type of blog can appear to lack direction. Is it a personal blog, is it intended to inform, or is it intended to be professional?

Monetization
Two small banner ads are shown at the top right. They are well-placed – unobtrusive, but easily-seen. There are some small “reviewme” and “text-link-ads” buttons way down towards the bottom of the sidebar. I think these should be more prominent – they are likely to be missed by most viewers.

Summary
This is a very attractive blog. All the graphic components work well together, and the whole is a harmonious picture in the web browser. However, some of the monetization items need to be more prominent, and to stand out from the design, to encourage viewers to participate. I also think the author should decide whether this is to be a personal journal, or a professional blog.

Earlier, Anil Dash from Movable Type commented on my Movable Type Running Scared post. I was going to reply in comment, but I had too much to say for myself (SHOCK!), so thought I’d make a blog post about it.

The “losing ground” assertion is based on comments made on several blogging forums i frequent, and comments from other bloggers. LiveJournal may be the largest O/S community, but how current is that community? How many people are actively using their journals, and how many are dormant (like mine)?

My feedback is that many prolific bloggers are using Wordpress. Take a look at: Top 25 Blogs About Blogging. The top 3 listed (I haven’t got time to go down the whole list) are: Problogger, Copyblogger, and John Chow - ALL use Wordpress. These are bloggers read by bloggers, and are hugely influential. Take a look at Darren Rowse’s comments: Wordpress vs Movable Type. So, yes, SixApart may have a massive user base, but I’m guessing it’s fairly stagnant.

It may also be that Six Apart are very strong in the coporate sector, but I suspect that’s more about the corporate psychology of “buying something because it must be better than something that’s free” rather than on performance or ease-of-use improvements. There’s no doubt that Movable Type were early into the blogging software sphere, which then would create a critical mass of professional users of the software.

Remember the early days of PCs? When IBM were selling bucketloads of slow, heavy, overpriced boxes. Why? Because of the phrase much-quoted at that time: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”. Corporate pressure was brought to bear on purchasing decisions. It was the safe option, all round. No one wanted to risk their job to buy one of those new-fangled Toshibas or Compaqs.

And why suddenly give it away for free? Is it, as I read somewhere, “to get back in touch with our core Open Source user base?” This makes very little commercial sense, unless you need to start grabbing back market share from Wordpress upstarts. No commercial organisation gives anything away if they think they can charge for it. Or is the O/S version going to be cut-down or ‘knobbled’, encouraging users to pay for a commercial upgrade?

I stand by my statements. Good luck to Six Apart, and I will certainly look at the O/S version of MT when it becomes available. However, I think they’ve got a lot of work to do to move people away from a platform that they’ve learned to trust, and for which there are so many third-party additions.