Get rid of the lesbian pictures
Don’t worry, this is a perfectly safe post, if your surfing from work you’re not going to lose your job. Unless of course your employer doesn’t like the fact that you are reading a blog that encourages you to break your shackles and start a lucrative blogging career. And he or she will be really mad when you are making more than they ever could working hours they can only dream of.
Anyway, back to the story. Blog design, like any design, is a highly subjective matter. What pleases you might not please me.
I’ll give you an example.
As a professional musician I am acutely aware of the lies and deceit that fills the industry. For instance, look at every single talent show, Pop Idol, American Idol or any of the other replicas that infest the schedules every hour of every day. These shows have nothing to do with music. They are simply freak shows that depend on the endless capacity of the masses to watch whatever is put in front of them.
A musician friend of mine once said,
Producing TV talent shows is like giving starving people the choice between eating paper or cardboard. Don’t give them anything else, wait long enough and they will, without fail, eat one of them. And then you’ve got them. Just keep feeding them the same thing and they will keep coming back for more
Now that’s a bleak and depressing point of view, but it’s true.
No one would argue that Britney Spears has an ounce of talent. But any record that bears her name sells and sells well. She doesn’t write songs, she doesn’t play an instrument, she doesn’t even sing, depending on session singers and technology to prop up her ludicrous sham of a career. My cat, Coltrane, is a more capable musician than she is. At least when he walks along the piano in search of a comfortable place to flop it’s his own paws that are hitting the keys. But the media are able to push Britney to saturation point because they are just that, the media. Payola, the practice of record companies paying the media to push their products is alive and well. Coltrane, of course, remains without a media funded deal.
But despite the attempts of the media to control everything, they can’t control peoples opinions. And this is never more evident than on the internet. If people don’t like the look of a blog, or any website, they will leave. No matter how good your content is the look of your blog, or even a particular aspect of your blog, can send surfers scurrying to the close button.
And with that it’s time for a confession. I’m not confident that the current design, with it’s large headings and even larger dates set in the very Mac centric Hoefler Text, is the best solution. It works for me, it makes me happy, but it might not make you happy. If your using Windows you won’t see Hoefler Text because Bill Gates and his team don’t think quality fonts are important, happily eschewing Helvetica for Arial for instance. Worse still, if you are using Internet Explorer, in any of it’s incarnations, the dates are cut in half and the layout is rearranged in much the same way a dog rearranges cushions when left alone in a room for more than five minutes.
However, even with all these browser and font availability issues, it has taken a fresh, honest, and beautiful, set of eyes to make me aware of something that could be getting in the way. Earlier today I asked my wife to take a look at the design. I know she reads Upstart Blogger but not usually within the design, preferring to feed read. But today she fired up Safari and took a look, scanning the page from top to bottom making mental notes as she scrolled through. And then, it happened,
Get rid of the lesbian pictures, they create the wrong impression.
Lesbian pictures. What lesbian pictures? Scroll roughly halfway down the sidebar and you’ll see two small banner ads. Both are identical since the ad is for a double up hosting promotion. The photos on the ads depict two girls, back to back, nothing lewd, nothing approaching pornographic, but, looking at them again with my wife’s comments ringing in my ears I can see how they could, possibly, create the wrong impression. And possibly is the keyword here. It is possible that they might cause offense.
On the internet it’s not worth the risk. Whatever it is that might cause offense, no matter how small the possibility, it’s just not worth the risk.
The pictures in question will go. They are only still hanging around to illustrate, literally, my point while this post is still fresh.
Want to make sure everyone smiles when they see your blog? Get a fresh pair of eyes to take a look and listen to what the person attached to them has to say. Like me, you might be surprised.
A catchy headlines!
I find your blog theme unique but a little too bland. Not playing with colors and hardly any graphics to draw attention to. Even on my 13″ screen the texts are slightly too big to my liking. Well, it’s your blog not mine :)
I think the biggest mistakes are:
- Black links with red underline.. I associate this with spell checking. Link underline color should be the same as the link color.
- The big ass dates.
- The title under the text. How did you think this was a good idea? Nowhere have I seen this. Is this just to be different? Being different isn’t necessarily a good thing. It’s not good usability, that’s for sure.
- No pagination on the home page.. WHY?
- Archives before categories sidebar. Makes no sense. Do we really need an archives sidebar? One link to the archives page would be much better as it takes up alot of space.
- Color. Ain’t no color on this site. It’s depressing.
I wrote about some of this in my iphone contest post a few months back..
http://contestblogger.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/iphone-3g-giveaway/ — Obviously all of it no longer applies since you already made some changes.
Thanks for those comments. I think they both illustrate the point I was making. Not everyone likes the same thing.
Text too big, titles under headlines, red underlining, lack of pagination on the home page, these are all pretty common complaints. And I’m taking them on board, hence this post.
Bland? That’s a new one! But, again, it just proves that different people have different opinions.
There’s plenty of food for thought here, keep the criticism flowing, it’s genuinely helpful.
Well, may as well throw in my few pence worth…..I’m not a big fan of the red personally, but it does make the brain kind of stop and take notice. I find it a bit jarring.
I kind of like the minimalist thing though – there isn’t much to get stuck on – the blog is clearly about the writing in it, not pretty pictures…..which is cool and makes sense from an seo point of view.
The headings under the snippets….well obviously it is different and the usability catches you by surprise once or twice….but then again – could be a good thing because you have to take notice of what you are doing – you can’t just browse on autopilot. Also, a lot of the time, I notice I actually skip reading headlines (of newspapers or blogs or articles in magazines) simply because I like to get to the meat right away, so in a way, having the headline underneath sort of suits the way I read.
The “lesbian” thing….lol – I never even registered the lesbian connotation until I read this post – I just saw the ad and thought “oh an ad”. I have to admit, I don’t often go off reading the sidebar anyway so….
Ashley, as wondering if you caught this article in Wired:
Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
And if so, what you thought.
Your back to top link doesn’t work
The lesbian pictures were what kept me coming back!
Well it’s not a sexual image (or even suggestive of such).
Have you considered the flip side: that removing the images because it *may* be offensive to some people (who, I assume, would dislike lesbianism..) is actually offensive to Lesbians…….
Nothing is ever cut and dried :(
Oh and I like your theme a lot :D it is a little odd when you first come to it but I quite enjoy the unique layout (even though I do now read it through a feed).
Personally, I think the line spacing makes the text difficult to read. It is also true that red underlining makes me think of a spell checker. The black on white reminds me of McSweeney’s -which is a good thing. They, however, kept the lines closer and the column really narrow to help people read.
I’ve always thought the lesbians were a little too suggestive for this blog. Thanks Mrs. Morgan!
I think it’s refreshing.
afruit – The Wired article is yet another example of traditional media running scared. Wired is a magazine owned by a large traditional publishing conglomerate. It’s in their interest to dissuade people from blogging since it takes away advertising dollars from their publications. I’ve been reading the comments and it seems like the vast majority agree with me. Wired, and their owners, are part of the old guard. They are terrified of what is happening to publishing.
They suggest that people use Facebook etc. etc. but they point they miss is that Facebook makes money for Facebook, not for you. And that’s why they like it. Because it keeps the money in the pockets of big business, not the individual.
If you want to be relevant online, and make money online, then blogging is the way to go. If you want to make money for Fox and Rupert Murdoch then use Facebook, Myspace and all the other junk. If you want to make money, and lots of it, for yourself, blog.
Your blog is ok, I like it.
Just as someone mentioned above, you should play little bit with the colors of the blog, looks too bland. And maybe the headline font size can be reduced, but other than that it’s fine :)
Best regards,
TheMoneyac
Hee hee, go Mrs Morgan. ;D
Frankly, the only reason I read your blog was for the lesbian pictures. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I’m kidding of course, but the design is strong. I read it on both a PC and a Mac, it’s clean and professional. The only thing that I would possible suggest is that you should replace some of your graphic text with SIFR text to make it more compatible with text readers and possibly (if I was to dream a dirty dream) make a version slightly more iPhone friendly.
Just my two cents worth but with the current exchange rate, that’s closer to a penny and a half so take it for what it’s worth. Chris