Seven trends that annoy me the most about blogs.

Word Press is a glorious platform for bloggers, writers and business minded folk alike. You can reach out to people you generally wouldn’t, share ideas, the human experience, earn money for doing a hobby you enjoy most and keep a corner of the internet for yourself.

There are some common trends, traits and style choices however that really bug me. Without further ado, because this is my space to be old and crotchety about things–let me share them with you.

Gargantuan RSS buttons make me want to punch kittens. And I love kittens, but if I visit your blog and your RSS feed button, badge, graphic or what have you is larger than your header banner and the main focus of the site? Not only am I not going to subscribe, I’m probably not going to continue bothering to visit. Unless, of course, the graphic you use and its presentation is clever, different and original. There’s something about a giant, obnoxious, glossy orange square or circle that makes me roll my eyes a little. I equate it with being pushy; the car salesmen pitch of the RSS world. It’s a bit tacky like that pair of argyle socks grandma gave you last Christmas.

The first thing I see on all of your posts, on your home page or individually is not an image or the opening to your post–but some CSS dotted border “Don’t forget to subscribe to my feed! Like this post? Subscribe to my feed to read more you want to don’t you love my post subscribesubscribehisubscribe!” Did I mention the fact that its probably placed at the very top of every post, possibly a different background color to catch the eye with a border and a million links to your RSS feed. Look–here’s the deal: let me read your god damn post before I decide whether or not I want to subscribe to your feed, okay? And then, let me come to the decision about whether or not I want to subscribe on my own. Because I am a big, grown up…grown up here. I don’t need to be reminded fifty million times in garish ways to subscribe and can come to the conclusion all my self if I want to subscribe without you holding my hand at every turn. So can it. Put it at the bottom of your post if you OMG CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT or make it small and less annoying.

Stealing content from every other website, such as popular youtube videos, top Stumbles, or top stories from dig and slappin’ it up in a post does not, a good post or blog, make. Especially if you do this without any effort to put, at least, a little unique twist on it. I keep seeing the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over again rehashed and re posted in blogs. Now, there’s really nothing wrong with your story about the Large Hydrogen Collider–so long as what you post has something written in your own words. Get what I mean? Sure! Go ahead and post that cute kitten sleeping under a dogs ear that has been seen a million times. What will make it original is maybe a paragraph or two about what you think of it, how it makes you feel, opinions or even a cute story of why it reminds you of your favorite pet. I am so tired of seeing blogs that just pull from feeds or yoink content off front pages. I call them lick n’ stick blogs and they aren’t terribly memorable. I don’t re-visit these kinds of blogs as I can view the same content generally all over the internets whenever I want.

Your site is so glossy I need a pair of sunglasses to see it. Yes, yes, I know–there’s a little gloss

and gradient on 2phatgeeks, but you’ll note the important word there: a little. If you have glossy title backgrounds with glossy date backgrounds ontop of glossy post backgrounds with glossy menus that have glossy drop downs with glossy sidebar headers and glossy gloss then you might be overdoing it. Besides that, the glossy trend is a has-been-done-there-did-that-let’s-move-on-please trend in design that’s making designers and readers twitchy alike. Try for something different, go minimalist or clean, turn away from the gradient side or search for something a little less shiny.

There are so many ads it drowns out your content. You have Google banner ads at the top of every post, you have Google adsense ads in the sidebars, your RSS feed, your comments and your posts themselves are littered with text ads. Every second word I am reading is a link. We are crammed full of advertising, spam, and just plain crap every day we are online. Do you really think your readers need to have it jammed down their gullets when they visit your site? By all means, make money! Have a few adsense/banner ads, sell your 125×125 spaces but don’t make it so invasive that people have to dig through sponsors to find what you’ve written.

You never ever comment back, not even once since you set up your blog. Some one took the minute or two out of their day, night, schedule or which ever to write you a comment to a post. Sure, you worked hard on it and it deserves comments! So too, do those who actually respond to what you write. If people comment on your blog and all they get from you is silence, generally the message you are sending your readers is that you don’t care. You don’t care they’re commenting and eventually they’ll stop commenting all together. If you can’t be arsed to read and comment every once in a while, why should they?

Splash pages suck the very living soul out of your readers from their bleeding angry eyes. I don’t want to click on a page, which will bring me to a page, which will redirect me to a page which is your blog. This isn’t the puzzle box of blogaliciousness and I am not a hamster to jump through your hoops. I want to read your blog, not do the truffle shuffle in hopes I am allowed into your cool club house. Seriously, just give me your blog, that’s what I want. I, like the rest of the intarwebs, tend to be seriously lazy and demanding. If I want to visit your WordPress, then by Odin, I am going to visit it. Making me jump through fiery web rings–no matter how pretty or well done they may be–just makes me want to chase something else just as shiny, but easier to get at.

If you’re guilty of any of this, take this with a grain of salt. I’ll cheerfully admit that sometimes a well designed, well thought out blog and website can get away with any or all of what I just listed off because of ingenius ways to present it. But if you don’t have a team of designers or don’t even know how to “make links clickable,” or think that green and pink DO go together…maybe it’s best you avoid the above and save me another dent in my forehead from head-desking after I visit your blog.

So what annoying trends in blogging have I missed? What makes you twitch uncontrollably when you see it?