Blog Design

Since I recently got back into the blogging thing, I've also been trying to catch up on my blog reading and commenting. And there are a few things that have stuck out to me that I wanted to share for my friends who are starting up new blogs, redesigning blogs, and even maybe for those who have been blogging a while and haven't really thought about these things:

1. I'm a lot more likely to comment if I don't have to deal with CAPTCHA. Deciding whether to remove that step is something everyone has to evaluate, and I understand if you're more comfortable keeping it. I don't know what kinds of comments you might get if you get rid of it, but I know what kinds of comments you're less likely to get--the ones that I'm considering posting but aren't important enough for me to bother if I have to do the CAPTCHA too.

2. I use an RSS reader (Google Reader specifically in my case), and I don't like seeing only a preview of the posts I'm reading. If I have to click through to read the whole post, I'm more likely just to mark that I've read it. For a really long time I had the settings of this blog on preview only and didn't even know it. So unless you're sure what your settings are, take a moment to check and make sure you're happy with them.

3. I heard a while back that readers prefer dark text on a light background to light text on a dark background. I was skeptical at first, but now that I've been paying attention, I really agree.

So these are all things that I've learned in the past year. Now what about you? Do you have any suggestions for how I could make my blog better for you?