
Please, for your reader's sake, spend 30 mins making these changes to your blog - Shanerostad
https://www.shanerostad.com/blog/how-to-design-a-blog
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joveian
"The worst offense I see around the web is super tiny font sizes."

Yes! So much so that I've been forcing 16pt DejaVu for everything for years
and it makes the web so much nicer that it is worth the annoyance of working
around sites that it breaks. Every time I use a default profile browser I
cringe at how small most text on the web is. I would use pt rather than px but
I guess it doesn't matter in CSS (and em/rem when possible as your link
suggests).

I don't mind wide text that much, but I agree it is usually better to limit
the width. Similarly, your image suggestions seem like good defaults. It would
be great if more people followed most of these suggestions.

The one I really disagree with is featured image being a must. There are way
too many useless images on the top of posts (and sometimes inside posts also)
just for the sake of having an image. My local newspaper is the worst at this,
where I often look at several stories a day with the same (sometimes
misleading) stock image, but lots of blog posts do the same thing (including
this one). Wost is like this one where the useless large stock image is in the
blog header.

I would also add no popups or fixed headers or footers. Don't pop up share
icons anywhere (this page provides a good example why not :(). Just leave the
share icons at the bottom. Follower side bars are often annoying (particularly
when they have share icons) but occasionally useful and at least don't
obstruct anything on a larger display.

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zzo38computer
I think it is good that you can set your own preference for font size rather
than that being defined by the webpage designer; my own preference is much
smaller than 16pt. I also dislike the narrow page width, and prefer it to fill
the window; it should be the user's job to set their own preferences (there
are browser extensions to apply your own CSS to webpages; I use this to alter
the styles of many webpages, including even Hacker News).

I generally design webpages with no CSS at all (and no scripts either); it can
use whatever preferences the user has set in the browser configuration,
instead.

I agree there are too many useless images. I say: do not include any images at
all unless it is a major part of the article. Stock images are not helpful.
(Again, I sometimes use CSS to suppress them.)

I agree with you no popups, no fixed headers/footers/sidebars, no popup share
icons. (Many kinds of share icons should be outside of the scope of the
document anyways; you do not need to include them at all. The user can use a
browser extension or bookmarklet or something to do sharing if wanted.
Anyways, the document author does not necessarily know what the user wants to
share, with whom, and how.)

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joveian
I agree share icons (at least for off site sharing) shouldn't really exist at
all in web pages, although I think it would be a good idea for browsers to
have a share function integrated so that you could add a new share option
similar to how new search options can be easily added with one click. At least
one of the many benefits of the blocking I use is no share icons.

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cweiss
Just because there might be bloggers out there reading this looking to improve
things - SHOW ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATES! This is especially critical for tech
blogs.

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zzo38computer
I think the user's own settings should be used, and they don't need to worry
about that. If you want it wide or less wide, to resize the window. Many
webpages use CSS and often I have to correct them by applying my own CSS on my
side, but some webpages do not use CSS and they are usually OK without needing
any CSS added. And yet, often just plain text is OK you do not even need HTML.

~~~
joveian
Not all content is the same an it is annoying to keep resizing windows (which
is why I use the ratpoison window manager). I wish it was easier for the user
to indicate with preferences, but I'm not sure if there is a good way to do
that right now.

I agree plain text can be fine, but page width has also been an issue with
plain text for a long time :/. Although 38 character width works well most of
the time IMO.

~~~
Shanerostad
This is how I see things. As a user, I don't want to have to set custom
specifications for my browser (especially since a lot of sites will break
them).

I just want a site to look good as a _baseline_, and then I can resize /
adjust if I really need to.

