Little, Big Mistakes in your Blog
It's very easy for little mistakes to creep up in your blog. Small things that ordinarily, you wouldn't look near. But a little mistake can have a big effect on how a person sees your site.
Do You Live in the Past?
How many web sites have "© Copyright 2008 Blog Name" in their footer? But does yours still say "© Copyright 2007 Blog Name?"
It's a simple mistake to make (Why would you be reading your own footer?), but if a reader notices it, they'll have a nice laugh at your expense.
Even the very best of us make mistakes, isn't that right TechCrunch and Shoemoney?
Do You Still Recommend Your Blogroll?
A reader generally trusts a blogroll recommendation. When clicking a blogroll link from a blogger I respect, I expect to find a high-quality site on the other end.
Presumably each blog you add to your list is high quality at the time, but not all blogs maintain that quality. Are you still subscribed to their feeds? Has the author been absent of late?
Spring clean your blogroll so that your recommendations continue to be valuable.
Do You Make False Claims?
Here on Pro Blog Design, I remove the NoFollow from my reader comments. Or at least, I thought I did.
Thanks to Marshall, I found out that the Link Love plugin does not work with WordPress 2.3. A lot of people are using this plugin, and most of them won't have realised either.
Sadly, this honest mistake won't look so honest to a reader who sees a DoFollow banner on your blog, but finds only nofollows in your code.
For those of you using Link Love, install NoFollow Free instead. It works a charm, and has even more features to play with. Apologies for recommending Link Love in my comment plugins post!
Does Your Blog Still Validate?
If your blog has valid code, it's common to boast about it in the footer. However, just because a design was valid when you set up your blog, doesn't mean it still is.
I have xHTML and CSS validation buttons at the bottom of every page here. But at the moment, both of them are invalid on my homepage. This doesn't bother me because the CSS errors are irrelevant and the HTML ones will disappear off the page in a few posts (And be replaced by new ones no doubt!). It is something that I should look into though, or at least remove my claim...
If you use the buttons, you should check up on them every now and again to make sure things aren't getting out of hand.
Do Your Readers See What You see?
For most people, there is no reason to ever load up a second browser. Unfortunately, this means that if something goes wrong in another browser (e.g. a plugin malfunctioning), you won't know about it until someone tells you.
One trick for designers at least (Who load up the other browsers when coding every now and again), is to set your blog as your homepage. That way, you'll see it often enough.
In the same vein, you should be subscribed to your own RSS feed. Your RSS feed is crucial, and an error there could cost you a lot of subscribers.
Have you made any of these mistakes on your own blog? I know I have. Little mistakes are all too easy to make.
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About the Author - Michael Martin is the founder of Pro Blog Design. He works as a freelance web designer, loves WordPress, and has an unhealthy addiction to smilies. Written on 11th January 2008.
Other posts tagged with Blogroll, Coding, Date, Errors, Perception.
25th January, 9:20 pm GMT
Cemiotika,
Read the post please, under the "Does Your Blog Still Validate?" section. I'm aware of the errors here; I just don't care overly.
Marco,
lol, thanks. There are quite a few errors, and I know I should fix them, but when I sit down to work on my blog, I always find there's something more important that I should look at first. xD
25th January, 9:59 pm GMT
Glad you got in before I did Marco.Why is it that all negative comments don't have a link back? It can't possibly be that they don't all have a website.
25th January, 11:13 pm GMT
Kristarella,
lol, thanks for sticking up for me.
He probably has a point though. I guess I'll add "Fix Validation" to the already-longer-than-I-can-handle to-do list.
29th January, 8:56 pm GMT
You should add:Does your Blog Theme load on all browsers and every settings?
This blog is not best viewed at 1024X768 on IE
My blog doesn't either. Just too lazy to fix. Been thinking to have you redesign it
31st January, 8:11 pm GMT
Max,
That would be a good addition. Checking in IE6 is the real pain I find. Why Microsoft won't make a simple to setup IE6 for Vista is beyond me...
And lol; well, I'm always up for a good project.
2nd February, 6:30 am GMT
The last one - do readers like what they see? - has always been a lot more important to me than whether the code validates.On a more important note, any thoughts on the legal implications of not having a date ( or even just a year / range of years ) in your copyright notice?
2nd February, 6:45 am GMT
I've been talking to a few people about copyright and it seems that there's no legal implications to not having a little logo or dates.
You already have monopoly (the right of copy) over the expressions of an idea that you have created. Using a (c) simply reminds people of that. (cc) is a method by which you can automatically allow others certain levels of usage of your stuff.
That's my understanding of it at this point. It might vary in different countries, so apologies if what I've said doesn't apply to you.
2nd February, 12:42 pm GMT
I think Kristarella has solved it there. By default, anything you create is copyright to you (e.g. I couldn't just steal Kristarella's Gravatar and use it, even though she hasn't stamped "Copyright" all over it
)
Adding that line to your footer seems to be a convention, more than a real legal measure (Just like how I still use "
© Copyright" in mine, even though PixlNinja may well have been right in saying that wasn't perfectly semantic).
25th February, 12:09 pm GMT
A good list, some of those are easy to ignore.To ensure my site stays valid, I use inursite, which will validate a site daily and provide an RSS feed indicating pass or failure. It's an excellent little nag to ensure you fix any mistakes.
25th February, 8:52 pm GMT
Andy,
That sounds like a good idea, but I think I'd get sick of the nagging and end up just ignoring it.
Can you set it to check weekly just?
13th March, 5:14 am GMT
I think that if you wrote them in compact points then it would look more better....
13th March, 6:57 pm GMT
I thought the same thing, but I'm not sure how to improve it really. The questions did need (for the most part!) the few lines of explanation each.
Maybe a bulleted list of the questions right at the start?
3rd April, 2:52 pm GMT
Some great tips thanks