Weekly Wrap-up: War on Clutter
August 19th 2007
Clutter by di_ana Every Sunday, from now onwards, I intend on writing a Weekly Wrap-up post. The post will first of all present a set of links on a certain topic, related to blog design of course. After the links, I'll write a little summary of anything special that happened on Pro Blog Design that week, and any comments that really stood out to me.
So without further ado, the first wrap-up is on de-cluttering your blog.
About a week ago, Darren Rowse set his readers the task of de-cluttering their sidebars, as part of his 31 Day Project. Of course, Darren's blog has around 30,000 readers, so when he says to do something, mere mortals must do. The object of de-cluttering is to remove all of the "cool" widgets and such that have built up over time, but aren't benefitting your readers. In response to this task, Mihai wrote up a list of everything in his sidebar, and assessed individually whether or not he should keep each one.
This is a great way of removing clutter from the sidebar, but what about the rest of the blog? Cue Skellie. Skellie has written up the most fantastic list of 50 Ways to De-Clutter Your Blog. Whilst I may not agree with them all, I can guarantee that you will find at least a few points which apply to your own blog, leaving you with some decisions to make.
Furthermore, Mihaela Lica has written a great article on how SEOs and designers may well have different opinions on certain aspects of a webpage, and how they cause clutter, whilst Marc & Angel have pinpointed the most notorious example of clutter on the web, Myspace. To finish up, I'd like to point out that removing clutter isn't specific to webpages. This is a universally desirable goal.
What's Happening With Pro Blog Design?
We've switched from showing partial feeds, to full feeds. I take it this is a change that most of you approve of? Apologies for sending out partials in the first place. I won't make that mistake again! Thanks to Kristarella for pointing it out to me. On the commenting side of things, the discussions on opening links in new windows, and the use of post excerpts on the homepage have been fantastic. Many great opinions have been given so far!
The high-point of the week blog so far has been receiving an SOB (Successful and Outstanding Blogger award) from Liz Strauss, the successful blogger. The style of this post was actually inspired by Joanna Young's themed link-post idea, and Liz's subsequent challenge.
Part of Liz's description of an SOB is, "They take the conversation to their readers..." In other words, there couldn't be such awards without the readers. This blog would be nothing without the readers, subscribers, and commenters above all. So, to everyone who has left a comment so far, thank you! And to everyone who hasn't, perhaps you can fix that by answering a question?
What did you think of this style of post? Is it something you'd like to see continued weekly?
Twitter
August 19th at 1:41 pm GMT
Comment #1
Thanks for the inclusion, Michael. My gawd, MySpace! The minimalist's nightmare ;).
August 19th at 2:13 pm GMT
Comment #2
Hehe - I did see a good solution to the Myspace problem once. It involved adding this to your CSS:
* {display:none;}August 19th at 3:05 pm GMT
Comment #3
Yep! Weekly Wrap-up=good idea
Heh, I wrote a post earlier today about trying to make my sidebar friendly... sort of. It was blogroll specific.
Alas, the weekend is over. Have a great week!
August 19th at 3:06 pm GMT
Comment #4
Wow! Michael,
I really think that Joanna, and now you and the others have raised the bar on what makes a link post worth reading. It's just great content with or without the links. Thanks!
August 19th at 3:20 pm GMT
Comment #5
Kristarella - Thanks for the opinion.
(I gave mine on your post as well. 
)
Liz - Thanks, I'm so glad that I found your post, and then Joanna's, before I wrote my first link post. And thanks again for the SOB!
August 19th at 3:47 pm GMT
Comment #6
Michael, congratulations on the award my friend!
Well deserved if I say so myself!
I think your putting entire posts on RSS is a good decision also. I am pretty sure I need to address things on my own RSS Feed... As Feedburner really messed up my feed and I've now had to create a new one... But I digress.
Again congrats... I love the weekly wrap up idea as well!
August 19th at 7:23 pm GMT
Comment #7
Thanks Tyler!
And good luck with sorting out your feed.
August 19th at 7:47 pm GMT
Comment #8
Great idea about decluttering side bar, it reminds me I need to declutter mine.
And switch to full-RSS, too...
August 19th at 9:05 pm GMT
Comment #9
lol - There's always something to be done on a blog, eh?
August 19th at 9:55 pm GMT
Comment #10
Congratulations on the award - as you say, you couldn't get an award like this without the readers - although you won't get the readers without the content, the conversation, the engagement
I think a round up post has a lot to offer - for the reader, but also for the writer, as it helps you to reflect on and learn from what you've been reading during the week. At least that's how it works for me.
Great blog by the way - I particularly like the way you have hover comments over the links to explain what we're going to. Part of me wants to ask how you do that - but part of me thinks it'll be beyond my technical ken, or what I can do in Typepad…?
Joanna
August 19th at 11:55 pm GMT
Comment #11
Hello Joanna - Thanks for visiting.
You're right about the link round ups. When you're working on a single theme, it's much more focused. You really delve into a topic, which in itself is a rewarding experience.
As for the hover comments, they're very easy to do actually!
I've never used Typepad before, but do you have some sort of code/HTML view? If so, use that, and find your links. They will look something like this: (The brackets will be triangular ones though)
(a href="http://www.xyz.com")Visit XYZ(/a)To add the description, you change it to look like this:
(a href="http://www.xyz.com" title="Write your description here.")Visit XYZ(/a)Wordpress has an easier way of doing it, but I don't know if Typepad has anything similar. Sorry.
(I really must get around to trying out Typepad someday!)
August 20th at 2:01 am GMT
Comment #12
Nice tip! Thanks Michael!
Sly from Slyvisions.com
August 20th at 6:01 am GMT
Comment #13
Yeah, weekly wrap-up is a good trend. Share some link love as well
August 20th at 3:10 pm GMT
Comment #14
I found you through "financing your family" blog. I really like it here and will be subscribing. I just started diving into the world of blog design. While to some extent I do what people want me too- i would love to more and more apply great blog design principles to the desires of the client
I'm a total newbie as I'm self taught... All I know how to do really is tweak the k2 theme 
I have a couple of different blogs. My mom one I have had since 2004 and back then i was on blogger and we didn't even have "categories" or "tags. Then when they were added, I wasn't so great at them! Talk about de-clutter! I have to go in and condense mine. But the blog also spans so many topics that it get's hard! I have started another blog @ notchinamade dot net, and am determined to keep it simpler tagging!
I'm a big darren rouse fan too
I'll be back, Thanks for this blog!
August 20th at 4:56 pm GMT
Comment #15
Michael, that makes sense and I think I should be able to do that - thanks for the tip, and for explaining it in terms a technophobe can understand!
Joanna
August 20th at 9:35 pm GMT
Comment #16
Thanks for the opinion pablopabla. Looks like I'll be sticking with them then.
Mommy Zabs - Great to see you here! Don't worry about being self-taught. I'm self-taught as well. It can be more fun that way. You're free to develop your own tastes, way of doing things etc.
I see that your blog really does have a huge list of categories. It actually looks okay on your blog though. I wouldn't worry about it too much really.
If you wanted to shorten the list on the mainpage, you could try grouping together similar categories, then list only the overall groups in the sidebars.
(It's too much to explain here, but I could certainly write up a nice way of showing those links, in a new post. If I can think of a site that does it, I'll email you the link, and you can let me know if you'd be interested? 
)
And good luck with the new blog! I hope all goes well.
Joanna - No problem. Hope it helped.
(It's probably too much work to do on every link, but it's a nice way to leave a personal comment about a site the first time you link to it. 
)
August 21st at 3:20 am GMT
Comment #17
Thanks for the response. Yes I would like to hear how you do the categories. I do have a plugin to condense them and have done a little, but need to more! I would love to read a post on the method you are talking about.
I'm still getting through some of your previous posts, I have about 0 time left right now, but I think I'm addicted to your blog
-mz
August 21st at 12:32 pm GMT
Comment #18
lol - Me too! It's definitely an addiction.
I'll definitely write up that post then.
September 3rd at 12:47 am GMT
Comment #19
Looking forward to reading that post as i now I have too many categories, what is the plugin
September 3rd at 2:29 pm GMT
Comment #20
Hey Suzie,
The post is here.
Thanks for reminding me to add the link to the post.