Thanksgiving Blog Purge Challenge
Why would you want a map like this on your blog?
Everyone’s blog traffic looks like that. A bunch of dots blobs scattered across the globe with a void in Africa. Get rid of it.
How about this:
People do not visit your blog for the weather report.
And about that tag cloud…Jeffrey Zeldman called tag clouds the new mullet way back in 2005. (personally, I think goatees are the new mullet, but to each his own…)
Heat Maps
Every person with a blog should read Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings. That article contains some really awesome heat maps that show what people actually look at on a web page.
I wonder why we spend so much time agonizing over how to create 3-column CSS layouts when people rarely look at those other columns anyway?
Great Versus Typical
I think Russell Beattie’s Weblog has a fantastic style: clean, beautiful, and easy to read. I modeled my site after his, although I’m certainly no graphic designer.
Unfortunately many blogs look more like this:
Yuk.
Be the Steve Jobs of Your Blog
Apple hardware design kicks ass:
Largely because they have the balls to remove extraneous features.
Corporate committees are the enemy of simplicity. Committees rarely produce anything inspiring. Instead, we get watered down politically correct pandering slop that tries to please every faction, while delighting nobody.
Your blog belongs to YOU. You do not have to answer to a committee! Be an evil dictator! Delete, purge, CLEAN UP! You can be Steve Jobs in your own little corner of the Internet.
Removing the clutter will make your blog better.
Thanksgiving Challenge
Your challenge is to remove something from your blog theme. Drop a calendar, a tag cloud, a map, a badge…whatever. Just go for simplicity.
(The hypocrisy of the gigantic ad on my own blog is noted…)
I think you should win for removing your entire blog! Can’t remove any more than that. It’s like zen blogging.
I like the way your blog looks a lot. But then, I like the way my blog looks too and I have one of those heat maps. They actually worked better back when I added it – now they show too much history so everyone’s map looks the same. But I think it’s neat to see what and where other people are reading right now. And, it drives a little additional traffic sometimes because people go to the maps site, see what other people are reading and come back into a different page.
I’m tired of seeing my theme though. Again, it was great when I put it up, but now I see it everywhere. If only I didn’t suck at design, I’d make my own. Props to you, Eric! I try to rebuild everything every few months so maybe it’s time.
I try it and see if it works