I settled down to a bout of contented blog surfing – catching up with old favourites and hopefully finding some fresh new blogs to enjoy.
Only minutes later I was muttering and, eventually, gave up annoyed. I know I’m particularly crabby today (two hours of eardrum-burstingly loud kids party entertainer will do that to a person), but this one had been a long time coming.
What’s with the right click ban? Really. I get that you don’t want anyone to steal your content. No one does. But surely if someone is determined to nick it they will. What the RCB means is that any one whose habit – as mine is – to open a new window for links gets really annoyed and stops bothering with your blog.
Can the Captcha. Please. I like to comment almost as much as I like to get comments. I also hate spam – lots of it tries to make its way onto my blog and some succeeds. But having Captcha (the really annoying and almost illegible letters you have to copy into a box before you can post a comment) makes it so tedious to comment that I often don’t bother.
Signing of no comments.Same irritation ranking as Captcha. It’s when you have to sign up to the blog platform or similar before you can comment. If I get the urge to comment, I just want to do it without faffing about remembering passwords and so on. Please make it easy for me.
Gain some focus. We aren’t professional photographers but there is one quick fix I urge everyone to make – wipe the smears off your camera phone lens. It makes me slightly queasy when I see a photo where you appear to be peering through a fog… unless, of course, it was foggy.
A plot that’s too thick. Anonymity is fine and I understand lots of reasons why people opt for it, but I do like enough of a back story for your posts to make sense.
Not minding the gap. No paragraph breaks that leaves a long block chunk of text is a real turn off. I’m probably a scatterbrained light-weight, but I can’t plough through it.
Agree with these. (not sure if my blog needs signing in, but don't find it that annoying myself as I just have my computer remember my passwords for them, so it's usually no bother). What I do find annoying about comments is when they automatically sign you up to follow them and you end up with lots of emails on further comments that you don't actually want. It's then difficult to unsubscribe to them!
On the RCB (I tend to do the same right click open new tab), it winds me up when bloggers let links open in the same window over the content. Why not set it to open in a new window? So much better for the readers.
Oh have to agree with most.. the bliddy captchas a pain..
The long paragraphs annoy me too. It's much easier to read in small chunks.
the thing that bugs me most is visitors that don't comment. If I purposely go to a blog I try to comment or at least like the post..
I have a recipe that comes up in searches quite often and is currently top of the searches (go me!! for a blog that gets about 20 visits a day) but has anyone commented recently or liked it – have they hell….
I'll get off my soap box now…:)
Totally with you with the Captcha – so totally annoying. Even though I get lots of spam (most of it winding up in spam box)I would still rather keep it off!
The whole captcha thing is a minefield I agree – I do have mine on, but only since I realised that spam comments in the spam box can be forwarded to other people in your gmail inbox (somehow – not sure how). Obviously I wanted to put a stop to that and since I was getting between 50 – 100 spam comments a day, deleting them all (which you have to do page by by page on blogger) was a real pain. So I apologise for the captcha thing – and probably should work harder to find an alternative – but for now I'm trying to spare any bloggy mates from being spammed from my blog spam box.
But TOTALLY with you on the others – especially the lack of paragraphs. Nothing (apart from white text on a dark background) makes me click away from a new blog more quickly.
I had forgotten about the annoying dozens of emails. I will add them to the list.
Fair point. It's annoying too.
Me too.
Wow that is a lot of spam
Very useful post Ellen. I'm just starting out as a blogger and finding it a minefield. Your guidelines are very helpful. Intrigued by your book too.
Totally agree with you. Long paragraphs of block text turn me off immediately, as does captcha. Not sure I 'get' the right click thing though…I obviously don't do it as I wouldn't know how to!
Hi there, your blog looks pretty good to me. I'd say don't worry about dos and don'ts too much. Blogging has to be fun.
Thanks for your comment. Then don't worry about right click, you don't need it.
I agree with you on all of these too but, like a commenter above, I also tried to do without the spam thing but found my inbox was just getting clogged up with notifications for comments that were all spam. In the end I had to give up and put it back on.
And I also agree with the commenter above about leaving comments. I also have some recipes that get viewed every single day but no one has left a comment since those that were left when the recipes were originally posted. And I know they have been pinned to Pinterest too. A simple, hi, pinned your recipe isn't too much to ask! Although maybe my spam thing puts them off :0)
Thanks Kirsteen. I think some people forget that bloggers have feelings too!