Blogging Category Archive
There are 15 entries in this category.
Four Point Oh
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 1 comment (by Michael Thacker)
Movable Type turned 4.0 yesterday. If you're an MT user, you're gonna want it.
The Usability of Me
Thursday, January 19, 2006
A few months ago usability specialist and author Jakob Nielsen wrote a piece on his biweekly column top ten usability mistakes blogs make. Nielsen has called attention to common web design mistakes for years in the form of top ten mistake lists, and for kicks (since I'm starting another attempt at redesigning this site) decided to see how I stack up.
1. No author biographies
I do have an about page, but took the link out because it's so out of date. In my redesign project I'm considering doing away the the entire concept of an about page instead having a brief biography and listing entries that which tell you something about me as well as my favorite entries.
2. No author photo
This has more to do with me not liking my self photos more than anything else. I've been thinking of asking around to my photographer friends to take some good pictures. In the meantime, please enjoy these photos of me.
3. Nondescript posting titles
Yep, I'm guilty of this one too. Many of my titles like "Your Fearless Leader" or "Transitory" that don't give you any idea what you'll find, and I'd already forgotten why that last entry was named that.
4. Links don't say where they go
Ok, here's one where I try and be good, giving titles descriptive links and also trying to give some context other than the link name, like I did in the introductory paragraph of this entry.
5. Classic hits are buried
Another mistake I make. See item 1 above.
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
Have you seen my archive? Calendar navigation would be a huge improvement over what I've got now. This is another thing I'm fixing in my redesign.
7. Irregular publishing frequency
To underscore that point, I've been meaning to write this entry for almost two weeks now. I'm not sure if the fact I'm an interaction designer at Six Apart (maker of TypePad, LiveJournal andMovable Type) should count for or against me in this case, but I do spend my day working on blogging software and often just need a break from blogging after I leave the office.
8. Mixing topics
I take issue with mixing topics being a mistake. For a blog which was built around a certain subject, this is true, but what if the subject of your blog is yourself? Should I pick one thing to write about and cover nothing else? Should I start a separate blog for everything I'm interested in? (as though my entries aren't posted infrequently as it is) Perhaps instead of seeing it as a mistake, I should build around this, letting a visitor stay within a certain topic and only jump over to others if they want. (In my new design there will be categories and you can browse around within a category)
9. Forgetting that you write for your future boss
Let me offer a quick hello to everyone at Six Apart reading this, especially Anil who discovered I was looking for an interaction design position through my blog.
10. Having a domain name owned by a weblog service
I do have my own domain name, it's just rather long.
So all in all, I've made 7 of Nielsen's 10 mistakes I believe. I promise to try and do better in the future.
Paid in Full
Sunday, October 16, 2005 4 comments (latest by mattymatt)
Dear Blog,
I know these last few weeks we haven't seen much of each other. You are not far from my thoughts though, and even if you haven't seen much of me lately, I'm sure you are glad I've been doing so much to help our friends.
Ryan is happy to have a new design, even if it is still a work in progress. I did some template work on for Laurel and Edu (she's planing to visit him in Barcelona too!)
Poor Jesse has been bombarded by comment spam, which I feel a bit bad about because Movable Type 3.2 has pretty much eliminated comment spam for everyone else I know. He's been kind enough though to give me an account on contrasts.net so I could fine tune the spam filters. After my last changes and additions to the filters yesterday, spam that would have gotten through before is now coming back with scores as high as -8 (all it would have needed was -1 to be caught). I think I'll write up a post later about what I did.
After he read the last entry I posted, Matteo took me out for dinner last week to thank me for the design I've been working up for his blog. He is really excited about it, and I've found it gratifying that from his couple brief description of "wanting something like my chemistry notebooks at work" I could come up with a design that so closely matched (even down to the color of the graph paper!) having never seen a chemistry notebook before. And yes, I know, I can't believe the monospace font looks so good either! Panchesco is the only one I feel has ever pulled it off well, so I did so many other combinations first before I even gave it a try.
I really hope to get Matteo's new design finished this week. I've got a concept for Andrew I want to start on next, but I promise to make for more quality time between us.