Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes and Where we Stand

I was reading an entertaining article from Jacob Neilson on weblog usability. I take this opportunity for self-assessment.

To summarize the key usability blunders he points out are:

• No Author Biographies
• No Author Photos
• Nondescript Posting Titles
• Links Don’t Say Where They Go
• Classic Hits are Buried
• The Calendar is the Only Navigation
• Irregular Publishing Frequency
• Mixing Topics
• Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
• Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

It got me thinking. Where do I stand wrt. usability on Simple Thoughts Blog as per his guidelines?

No Author Biographies
I do provide a somewhat extensive biography on this site, linked from all the pages.

No Author Photos
I failed on this count. Despite my intentions I haven’t got around to posting a photo. Partially also because I didn’t think it would be very interesting. I really want to be a “voice without form”.

Nondescript Posting Titles
I really work hard to make my titles very descriptive and I encourage other Taragana Network Bloggers to do the same. I agree with him that titles should be a mini-summary of the post.

Links Don’t Say Where They Go
I try to avoid this. Sometimes I am forced to do this, as shown above, because HTML lacks multi-link capability. HTML doesn’t allow me to link to several relevant articles / sites for a single phrase. The only option is to link to different sites from different words in the phrase.

Classic Hits are Buried
I try to highlight popular posts by the most discussed post list on the right column. Below it I provide the list of recently discussed post. I do have a plan to include a list of popular posts by hit count in near future. In the meantime I try to highlight random articles in archives section of this blog.

I also provided related articles below the content to enable users to view related links of interest.

A heat map of categories is also provided.

The Calendar is the Only Navigation
In fact I have taken the other extreme. I have eliminated the Calendar from all pages except the archives. Instead I have a list of articles by month with article count displayed, list of articles by category with article count displayed. The category list is sorted by having categories with largest number of articles on top. The whole sorted list of categories is also available from a combo box.

Irregular Publishing Frequency
Overall I try to be pretty reguilar about publishing. Though I would rather skip a day than print something meaningless.

Mixing Topics
I was guilty as charged. I have a strong interest in java software, web technologies, stem cell research, eye treatment, bioinformatics, biotechnology and host of other subjects. Consequently I used to write articles on wide ranging topics from stem cell to generics in java.

To address this I have added several blogs to cater to my divergent interests. I blog about stem cell research in the The Stem Cell Blog, general health topics in Consanesco Blog. More personal items are now blogged in The Angsuman’s Blog. I add interesting links to The Ctrl-S Blog. There are several such new blogs like also The Diabetes Blog to make each of them more focussed. So I have fully addressed this issue.

Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
I can never forget as I am my own boss and a strong one at that. Obviously this tip doesn’t apply to everyone.

Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Taragana.com and Taragana.net are as unique as they get.

What do you think about my compliance?