

Designing blogs for readers - ingve
http://mattgemmell.com/2013/05/22/designing-blogs-for-readers/

======
chasing
"Writing is inherently about its author, and is a product of their personality
and opinions – that’s not something to be shy about, and we shouldn’t try to
change it either. So, write for yourself – and hold yourself to an appropriate
standard, because you’d better believe that others are judging the person as
well as the piece – but as soon as you publish your views, you’re inviting
readers to take a look."

Matt comes very close to one of my beliefs about writing... Creative writing
is a way to give yourself an opportunity to think through an topic or story
and give the rest of us an insight into how your mind works. That's the kind
of writing I love -- the kind where I can see the gears moving to a certain
degree and I know the author is honestly putting an effort into analyzing a
subject or putting something difficult into words.

As an example, I think this is why the recent "Hyperbole and a Half"
([http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-
par...](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-
two.html)) about Allie's experiences with depression is so valuable and
compelling.

And it's why I find listicles and articles that purport to be delivering
glorious nuggets of truth from the top of Mount Bullshit to be boring,
frustrating, and obnoxious. (If you look at my comment history, you'll
probably find a fair amount of bitching about articles that are nothing but
(often wrong or over-simplified) conclusions with no evident thought process
behind them.)

I think it's actually something that's hard to fake. Like Matt says, your
personality and opinions are integral. And it almost forces you to start
writing about something you're not so sure about, which can seem
uncomfortable. Because you might come to wrong conclusions. But if you write
to edify yourself and to give yourself the chance to meditate and process the
world around you, then suddenly sheer audience count will matter much less
_and_ (if you're a good thinker) you might find yourself writing much more
compelling pieces, anyway, since, like I said, I think people appreciate being
able to see the mental processes of another person at work.

So. I've diverged a bit from Matt's initial point, but his words made me think
of this so I thought I'd share...

(Before someone else says it: No, I'm not talking about technical or
instructional writing. That's different.)

~~~
teach
Stephen King[1] relates a similar idea:

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out
being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what
the story is and get it right -- as right as you can, anyway -- it belongs to
anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. If you're very lucky, more will
want to do the former than the latter."

[1] Stephen King, "On Writing" (chapter 20)

------
chestnut-tree
I disagree with the opinion that comments are completely unnecessary. It does
depends on your readership, the topics you discuss and the popularity of your
blog. If you find too many of your comments to be rude, or that you're
overwhelmed by the sheer number then, sure, consider turning comments off.

However, many blogs don't attract comments in their hundreds. For me,
disabling comments would feel like saying to blog readers that I'm not
interested in what they think about my blog post (and I am). You might write
for yourself as you compose posts, but when you publish your post you want
others to read it. Are there blog authors who can honestly say they aren't
interested in the views of their readers about what they've written?

I would rather a conversation take place on my blog than telling users to take
the discussion elsewhere. (You can't really discuss things in a 140 character
tweet).

Related to this discussion is another viewpoint about getting rid of social
media buttons <http://ia.net/blog/sweep-the-sleaze/>

------
h2s
I couldn't agree more with his claim that comments are an unnecessary feature
for a modern blog. Back in Web 2.0 times comments were an absolute must-have.
I think the web in 2013 has largely moved on from the notion that "everything
must have a comment form below it".

People generally don't put as much work into their comments as you did into
your blog post, so the comment section is a tangible dive in written quality.
And they tend to be quite "fire and forget", because although somebody might
disagree with something in the five seconds after reading a post, they are
unlikely to remember that disagreement two days later and return to see if
anyone responded.

Personally, if somebody felt strongly enough about something I wrote to want
to say something to me something about it, I'd prefer an email anyway.

~~~
jseliger
_I think the web in 2013 has largely moved on from the notion that "everything
must have a comment form below it"._

It's definitely true that a lot of people don't put much energy into their
comments, but when they do those comments can be very valuable. For example, I
wrote a post about why physicians assistant or nursing school is a smarter
choice for most people than med school
([http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-
beco...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-become-a-
nurse-or-physicians-assistant-instead-of-a-doctor-the-underrated-perils-of-
medical-school/)), and some of the comments are really good. Do I delete the
dumbest? Yes. But the occasional really good comment outweighs the many really
bad ones, at least in my experience.

------
porker
I disagree with two points:

1\. Comments are still necessary. Tweeting a link and a short comment doesn't
cut it; not everyone has a blog (or wants to make a public post to a different
audience about another blogger's post) just to respond - to assume people will
blog about you is sheer arrogance. Maybe Matt doesn't care what others think,
or want a discussion and discourse, but I certainly do.

2\. Opening links in new windows or tabs _is_ OK if your blog has a very non-
technical audience. Most people don't know the keyboard shortcuts for opening
in a new tab, and even though they can right click... don't. It's always fun
to see people's enthusiasm when I show them the shortcuts, and to watch them
start opening links in multiple tabs!

~~~
qznc
I had Disqus comments on my blog for a while. However, I noticed that the good
discussions took place on Hacker News and Reddit.

~~~
mindcrime
Yes, which suggests that what the Web needs is proper support for aggregating
/ merging comments on a story when those comments are spread across multiple
domains. Ideally, you should be able to go to

<http://www.example.org/blog/a_post_about_something.html>

and see in the "comments" section the comments from HN, reddit, G+, and
elsewhere.

From what I remember when I started looking into something like this a few
years ago, from a technical perspective, SIOC[1] and FOAF[2] give us some of
the building blocks to do something like that. But it'll probably never catch
on just due to the economics...

At least if you blog on Blogger, they have integrated G+ discussions now,
which turns out to be kinda nifty.

[1]: <http://sioc-project.org/>

[2]: <http://www.foaf-project.org/>

~~~
qznc
Microformats are a more pragmatic approach.

<http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-in-reply-to>

------
mindcrime
_Don’t make links that open new windows or tabs; it’s grossly hostile to the
reader._

I don't really agree with this one. From my perspective as a reader, I prefer
when links have target="_blank" set, because it means if I forget to (or
couldn't be arsed to) ctrl+click or right-click -> open link in new tab, I
still don't lose my place on the current page, and can go poke around at the
linked content at my leisure.

Maybe I'm weird (OK, obviously I'm weird in some regards) but I prefer to open
links as I go, but read the main text-stream first, then go back and read
linked articles, posts, citations, etc. If they are conveniently opened in a
pile of tabs, it makes my life easier.

Curious how the rest of the HN readership feels about this...

~~~
lnanek2
Same here, I pretty much open every link in a tab, but then when I'm ready to
leave I want the last link in the same tab. So I prefer they all open in the
same tab and I decide when clicking.

~~~
mindcrime
Fair enough. What would be nice would be if there was an easier way of making
the behavior optional, besides:

A. making the user right-click and select from a context-menu

B. making the user remember (or not) to ctrl+click / middle-click

C. putting the infamous Here Is A Link (open in new tab) parenthetical thing
next to the link.

------
jmoiron
I've independently come up with the same decisions on many of these points
and, weirdly, a very similar blog design:

<http://jmoiron.net>

I decided even to dispatch with the header bar, putting navigation at the
bottom of the main page; presumably, people will only care to see more of my
writing if they've read the article. Not as good for people revisiting the
page, but they can likely remember <http://jmoiron.net/blog> or bookmark it in
order to get to the search.

My fonts are slightly smaller and slightly less contrast, and after looking at
Gemmell's blog I wonder if I should change that decision. I wanted to have
emphasized elements of the text easily distinguishable from the body while not
distracting.

Also, I agree with Gemmell's "The basic tenets of hypertext should be left
alone". One of these basic tenets, to me, are the semantic meanings of Blue,
Purple, and Red text for normal, :visited, and :active hyperlinks. If you want
to chose a link color, do not invert or violate these classical meanings.

~~~
qznc
Nevertheless, you seem to disagree with Gemmell about underlining links. In my
opinion the underlining is more important than the color.

~~~
jmoiron
Yeah, I think that bold looks better with sans serif typefaces than underline,
so that was a design rather than an ergonomic decision; perhaps not a correct
one. I think underlined blue text is probably the "most linky" looking text,
given the history of the web.

------
tjr
Somewhat off-topic, but as long as this discussion is on blog design:

What are good options for presenting significantly longer works? For example,
a 30-page paper, or a 100-page book?

Is it best for readability / usability to break things out into short blog
posts? Or ditch the blog format altogether and just upload some HTML files
that use a totally different style? Or something else?

~~~
jakub_g
(off-topic to off-topic) For long papers / books, think about learning LaTeX
and compiling your files to PDF (unless it must be an HTML).

LaTeX and its packages/templates have man-years of development invested into
readability. All the scientific papers are produced with TeX/LaTeX. The
program and packages for it solve numerous problems like proper spacing,
citations, bibliography, dealing with orphan paragraphs etc. etc.

~~~
tjr
This is from 2001/2003:

[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/avoid-pdf-for-on-screen-
read...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/avoid-pdf-for-on-screen-reading/)

Still true? Or are users okay with PDFs now? When browsing the web on my iPad,
PDFs seem quite acceptable.

~~~
jakub_g
I prefer websites to PDF, but when we're talking about 100 pages, PDF is the
way to go (unless you want to split into chapters and subchapters).

~~~
sigkill
If you're on a tablet, I think you would much appreciate an ePub. I most
definitely would. It's mainly for reflowing text. I know reflowable PDF is
possible but I have never seen one in the wild.

------
lmm
To my mind even this contains unnecessary elements, and I hate fixed-width
narrow columns. I've tried to push the limits of the absolute minimum of
distraction in my own blog (<http://m50d.github.com>); I'd be interested to
hear of people taking similar approaches.

~~~
h2s
A couple of Matt's complaints might apply to the design of your blog: tiny
fonts and long lines. Long lines are a readability problem because the eye
tends to get lost when jumping from the end of a line to the start of a new
one. Small fonts are a problem for obvious reasons.

The very first thing I did when your URL loaded was to increase the browser
text size. A good rule of thumb when it comes to typography on the web these
days is to be very cautious about setting a font-size smaller than the usual
16px browser default.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Agreed. The second thing I would be forced to do it shrink my window so the
lines aren't so long.

------
scoopr
I applaud the emphasis that is given to written text, that definitely is
something that deserves the attention and has been lacking on many sites.

But I kinda feel that this goes a tad over on the minimalistic side, which
isn't too bad, but I wouldn't like if applied in dogmatic way to all sites.

I don't know if the “most popular posts” lists are the most optimal for
content discovery, but having none seems a bit harsh. No, I'm probably not
looking for blog posts on specific date, but I often look couple previous or
next posts and the latest if they happen to relate to same subject, or if
there is more interesting content to be had.

Comments, I'm torn over them. I feel like it's an lost battle to have
discussions coherently in one place, but still many times I've found comments
on top ranking posts about problems I've had to be invaluable, with
corrections, alternative suggestions and updates to later versions of
software. Also doesn't mesh well with statically generated sites unless
something like disqus is used, which I generally don't like that much..

Social media buttons I value just about as much as I value any random ads on
pages. Even if I share page I do it by copying the address anyway — but I
guess it's a bit different on more mainstream oriented sites where the median
user might find address bars exotic and intimidating.

Also I would be interest on thoughts on how images relate to this. Should they
also be constrained within the text column bounds, should they be lightboxed
or link directly to the original picture? I find myself a little conflicted on
good use. This author seems to like linking to non-working flickr pages.

Hmm, I sound perhaps a little negative, but my overall impression was still on
the positive side.

------
aw3c2
I find that page hard to read due to its huge font-size. Also when I am
somewhere in the text and there is a headline, I have a hard time guessing its
level. Some additional decoration or indicators on the side might be nice. The
screen highly limits the overview as you cannot scroll away and quickly refind
your position, you lost the position. So additional marking of the place in
the text would help a lot with those "very few of many lines visible on the
screen" pieces.

edit: There is a similar problem on several of the namedropped sites too,
<http://www.marco.org/> <http://shawnblanc.net/> and
<http://www.loopinsight.com/> all have a weird mixture of title formatting of
the posts. Sometimes it is big, sometimes small, I have trouble seeing where
are post starts or ends and what are just smaller headings within one.

------
tathagata
Differently, did you know that readability is not always good for all types of
content? If an article requires some thought and concentration then less
readability is preferable - see this video of Adam Alter on something he calls
'disfluency' - <http://edge.org/video/disfluency>

------
earlz
Agree with most of his points. Unknowingly, my blog has followed the same kind
of timeline. My current design is not quite minimal, but the content has
nothing on the side, I don't have a huge header with a calendar and god knows
what else. The worst thing I have is a single ad in the header, but this
actually works quite well for content because usually the beginning of content
will be at the upper-middle of your screen, where the eye is usually resting..

The one thing I disagree with is comments. Comments are hard to get right, but
they're not replaceable by social media alone.

------
susi22
Completely agree with everything. That's also why I use readability (
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readability/oknpjj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readability/oknpjjbmpnndlpmnhmekjpocelpnlfdi?hl=en)
) which transforms the article I want to read into a very well designed and
readable format. Just by pressing `.

In addition it has an Android app which is done very well. About 80% of the
posts that I see here on HN, I simply safe for later and read at home in the
garden with this app.

------
ckluis
I agree with almost all of your points, the exception is the sidebar.

Not in the traditional sense, but in the sense of quotes, images, supporting
items - that are called left, right, or full width.

Using your site as an example and lets pretend its 12 columns with 3 empty, 6
for the blog, 3 empty. That space could be well served with links, resources,
images, quotes that serve to enhance the writing. These resources could
stretch into the 6 for the blog or remain isolated in their sidebars.

~~~
coldcode
I get a lot of people reading my recent 5 posts and my top 10 (by readers)
posts so I kept the sidebar. But there isn't much else in it. I considered
having it slide in or something but this is simpler.

------
identityhistory
I love the readability of your blog. Is there an equivalent theme for
WordPress?

------
danso
Sound advice...I'm viewing the OP from a tablet so I don't know if I'm seeing
something different than the norm, but whatever sparked the trend toward
single column content design...thanks! When I was mucking about in my original
blog's CSS, I wasted a ton of time thinking I needed multiple columns (in the
blog content) for floating images, boxes, etc.

Now I'm happy with just single columns...much less work to maintain, much more
readable for users, and more time to think about the actual words rather than
CSS.

Moving to Markdown helped expedite my preference for simplicity, too.

As our viewing surfaces only get more diverse, I hope single columns are a
long lasting trend

