Does your blog annoy people?

I tried to make a list of things that annoy people when visiting a blog. Most of these have personally annoyed me and some I have simply seen people ranting about.

1. Comments

People get really annoyed with blogs that dont accept comments. Especially comments from outside people. For instance if you have a blogger.com account and it's set that you can only receive comments from those who also use blogspot.

Register to comment is also one of the things that annoy people. Why do you have to register on someone else's blog to just make a comment. Most people just move along when they see that they have to register to leave a comment and that just leaves the person who's blog it is with a empty blog. Except if you have one massive user base.

2. To personal

No need to share all your information, we dont want to know what you dog had for breakfast. There is a exception if your blog is about you and its your personal diary but otherwise just skip the fine details you would not phone someone for. If you wont phone someone and tell them ie something personal its pretty much not worth blogging about it. As I said if you have a personal blog its fine.

3. Flash and popups

Wow back in the day when the internet just discovered flash. Well that's over now. Keep it clean. And those popups, No one reads them. In fact the only thing someone will remember from a site with a popup is the popup. They wont remember your great content or any of that. People seem to remember things better that they dont like than what they do like. Having a popup clearly tells your visitors that your are just blogging for the money and not really for the great content which you want to share.

4. Memes

What? Some people just over do memes.

5. Widgets

Have you ever waited for a site to load and when finished you realize you've waited for a widget bazaar? Some widgets are nice, actually you get a lot of nice widgets but when you display all of them at once the wall of widgets does not impress your readers no matter how nice all 100 of them are.

6. Pride

Yes Pride. Sometimes you get to a blog and the guy just thinks to much of himself. Sometimes these "bloggers" have a entire fan club but the one thing that is lacking is useful content. I can think of a few that brag about their blogs but there is nothing you really can learn from or it or actually nothing except for how much money they made and not showing you how to get there yourself.

7. Rude Author

Some bloggers are just rude. When someone comments on your blog, they have taken time out of their day to actually read your content, so even if they troll on your blog, just keep in mind that they actually visit your blog and try not to be rude to them. You can always gain troll readers by being friendly. Not just that sometimes they might have a point. Being rude to commenters is no way to build a better blog. If you have nothing good to say rather keep it for yourself. There is nothing wrong in disagreeing but do it in a friendly way.

8. Poor design and layout

Sometimes you just gotta go sidebar hunting when you arive at a blog. Sometimes you might think the sidebar is the content. If you cant design a working blog theme just use a free template. There's hundreds of great ones out there and you can use a GPL theme and just customize it a bit instead of having your blog look like whale hunters in Japan. Users know the content usually is in the middle somewhere but having 40 sidebars will most probably confuse them as well. Try and keep the most sidebars to 3, maybe 4 if you are desperate. As I said earlier, people will remember the bad stuff on your blog more than the good stuff. Keep it clean and tidy.

9. Videos

Do not load a video when your blog starts, I dont think I need to explain this. People know where the little play sign is, if they want to play a video let them have the choice. That is what makes the internet so great, choice. If you want to keep your readers give them this option when trying to shove videos on your page and force them to play it.

10. Blogs that blog against certain bloggers

I dont like certain bloggers. Actually I really dont like certain bloggers. But never blog saying how much you hate or dislike other bloggers, it might just backfire on you. I guess you have the right not to like certain bloggers but keep it for yourself. Its the safer way to go.

11. Insulting blogs

Want to gain readers? Some people get offended easy and adding anti- someone pictures might get you some hate mail. Insulting blogs do annoy some people. Some people simply just get intimidated when being on someone's blog who's really insulting.

12. Updates and old blogs

I really dont like getting to a old blog where the newest posts date back to when the internet first started. Those posts should really not be on a blog but it should be on history.com or somewhere where we can preserve them for future generations.

13. Rant only blogs

Stop complaining. You might get a visitor once or twice but after about the third time they come back and see that you are still complaining, they will just vanish on the world wide web.

14. Slow loading

People hate slow loading blogs but sometimes they just need a faster connection. Some blogs really are slow but some people just cant help it or the dont know how to make it faster. If you can try and keep your blog loading times as quick as possible. There are tools out there that will help you and show you why your page takes that long to load. I dont have any now but if you look you can find some great ones.

15. To much embedded crap

I know I said widgets but often I see to many other stuff like small gif's or everywhere where your blog is part of and some of those small images can make it look like your page is loading quite long, showing the hour glass and waiting for some small gif that's not planning on loading anyway. I really get annoyed with that sometimes. You just gotta hit the stop button. I guess my blog does this sometimes, well it used to I try keeping everything at a minimum now.

16. Only sponsored posts

Its good making money online blogging but keep it down a bit if you want to keep your users. Especially those casino blogs or sponsored posts that has absolutely nothing to do with your blog. To many sponsored posts show your greediness for money and lack of attention to your readers.

17. Text that blink or fonts that are to tiny

Dont do it. Never make text blink.

18. To many pictures loading

Use flickr, not everyone has 2mb connections and you can rather embed small thumbnails than the enter picture. Well one would be fine actually but some people embed 100's of pictures when the site or post really is not a photo blog. I have a excuse there, this blog is part photoblog.

19. To many ads

As I said we all have to make money but having ads everywhere puts the greediness in front of your readers once again. At least let them know where the content is. Make a arrow saying "the actual content of the site" pointing to what you have written to guide them the way through the 100's of ads if you have that.

20. Content thief

Dont even start with this. Small bloggers write brilliant posts and then some bigger bloggers come and steal the idea. When everyone has read the big bloggers post they see the small blogger and think he is a fake copy but infact big bloggers if I can call it that do it often. Just because everyone's blogs is not in the top 500 on technorati does not mean you can steal their content. Dont steal someone else's content. Just give them the credit and gain friends instead of enemies.

I guess I am going a bit overboard with this now and I guess there must be more reasons your blog might annoy people. I have just written these here I thought I would like to share with you.

Thanks for reading, please leave some comments.