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About your blog, IMHO a little re-styling would help a lot. I do like minimal layouts, but the serif font doesn't quite work for me. Also, maybe add some struc

About your blog, IMHO a little re-styling would help a lot. I do like minimal layouts, but the serif font doesn't quite work for me. Also, maybe add some structure? Your blogs seem to cover a broad range of topics. I am mostly interested in technical articles, but I have to actively filter out the stuff that I'm interested in (by reading the titles and guessing the topic; this takes quite some mental energy and might hold back readers from subscribing).

AndrewStephens 10y ago
Thanks for your comments. The styling is based on Tufte CSS, which I like quite a lot for longer works. I agree it looks out of place amongst modern sites but I am sticking with it for the moment. I totally agree on the scattershot subject matter. Some days I like writing about C++ and Boost, and some days I just like ragging on a terrible film. Perhaps I should split the blog into different subject areas but judging from my logs it would make very little difference to the way people use my site.
user5994461 10y ago
Allow me to be mean for a minute: Agreed, the font on the homepage nearly killed my eyes. Then "Here you will find various projects and musings. No information about sheep or horses though - sorry about that." Why is it called sheep.horse then? I am not even getting into how that seems like a spam domain to sell viagra or whatever. Then there are publications about anything and everything. There is no topic. And when I am reading an article. There isn't ANY link to other articles. You should have "most viewed" or "related" articles. People can only close your blog, there is nothing else to do on that page. No wonder they bounce. To conclude, the headers on top are barely readable.
- AndrewStephens 10y ago
  Thanks for your comments, I understand what you are saying about the font - I am experimenting with Tufte-style layouts and that is the font they recommend. I've noticed that it looks much better on MacOSX than on Windows based browsers. I also know what you are talking about with the related articles. I have not yet implemented such a feature in the software that builds the pages but it is on the to-do list. However, on my old blog I did have such a feature and it was rarely used. Part of the ethos of my site is to make the article text king and minimize everything else. That is why the header is so small and I haven't prioritized a bunch of internal links on each page. I have no ads and have nothing to sell so there is no monetary incentive to capture readers. I have noticed that the header is stupidly small on mobile - I'll get around to reworking this one day. I do get a kick out of knowing people read my stuff, but I am usually irritated by the stupid tricks other sites use to squeeze one more page-view out of you so I refuse to follow the same dark path.
  - gjstein 10y ago
    Be careful with font recommendations that aren't really geared for the web! Tufte is pretty particular about the fonts in his book, but they don't transfer well to the web. I also liked the tufts-css style, but ended up rolling my own, so that the widths worked out to be a bit more typographically "acceptable" (shameless plug for my blog layout: http://www.cachestocaches.com/2017/3/complete-guide-email-emacs-using-mu-and-/ http://www.cachestocaches.com/2017/3/complete-guide-email-em...)
    - AndrewStephens 10y ago
      That is a pretty sweet theme. I was going for a more spartan look, without a menu down the left hand side. I even debated not having a header but that seemed a little too bare.
  - Mz 10y ago
    As a blogger, my experience has been different from yours, but I sincerely appreciate you giving us the information you gave us above (in your top comment). Let me suggest the following in place of your current intro: "Hi, I'm Andrew Stephens, a programmer living in Boston, USA. This is my blog of random musings. You can contact me via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn." But only include those contact details IF they can actually reliably get hold of you that way. If you ONLY check your email, then ONLY list your email and not the other two. (Your current wording suggests "good luck with that!") People can figure out for themselves that there are no comments, that this page is your index, etc. Those comments add zero value and just give a wall of mostly useless text. If there is a funny story behind the URL, you could include a really brief synopsis of it, such as "I bought this URL because I was inspired by Jeph Jacques' walmart.horse stunt to get a .horse domain." That would do a lot more for your blog than saying "Sorry, no info on sheep or horses."
- xiaoma 10y ago
  >"Then there are publications about anything and everything. There is no topic." It's a blog. In this case the topic is the author. That was really common in when that one was started and I enjoy that kind of blog over one designed around a very narrow interest any day. As Andrew pointed out, though, Facebook and others have captured a lot of people's attention and pushed personal blogs into the periphery.
jszymborski 10y ago
I'm sorry, but I heartily disagree re: style. I love it. I was just about to write a comment to commend it. Love the way you handle underlines, the font is pleasant, the sidenotes are awesome and I like your background color. I do agree that the some structure would help with retention, if you're interested in that.

AndrewStephens 10y ago

Thanks for your comments. The styling is based on Tufte CSS, which I like quite a lot for longer works. I agree it looks out of place amongst modern sites but I am sticking with it for the moment. I totally agree on the scattershot subject matter. Some days I like writing about C++ and Boost, and some days I just like ragging on a terrible film. Perhaps I should split the blog into different subject areas but judging from my logs it would make very little difference to the way people use my site.

user5994461 10y ago

Allow me to be mean for a minute: Agreed, the font on the homepage nearly killed my eyes. Then "Here you will find various projects and musings. No information about sheep or horses though - sorry about that." Why is it called sheep.horse then? I am not even getting into how that seems like a spam domain to sell viagra or whatever. Then there are publications about anything and everything. There is no topic. And when I am reading an article. There isn't ANY link to other articles. You should have "most viewed" or "related" articles. People can only close your blog, there is nothing else to do on that page. No wonder they bounce. To conclude, the headers on top are barely readable.

AndrewStephens 10y ago
Thanks for your comments, I understand what you are saying about the font - I am experimenting with Tufte-style layouts and that is the font they recommend. I've noticed that it looks much better on MacOSX than on Windows based browsers. I also know what you are talking about with the related articles. I have not yet implemented such a feature in the software that builds the pages but it is on the to-do list. However, on my old blog I did have such a feature and it was rarely used. Part of the ethos of my site is to make the article text king and minimize everything else. That is why the header is so small and I haven't prioritized a bunch of internal links on each page. I have no ads and have nothing to sell so there is no monetary incentive to capture readers. I have noticed that the header is stupidly small on mobile - I'll get around to reworking this one day. I do get a kick out of knowing people read my stuff, but I am usually irritated by the stupid tricks other sites use to squeeze one more page-view out of you so I refuse to follow the same dark path.
- gjstein 10y ago
  Be careful with font recommendations that aren't really geared for the web! Tufte is pretty particular about the fonts in his book, but they don't transfer well to the web. I also liked the tufts-css style, but ended up rolling my own, so that the widths worked out to be a bit more typographically "acceptable" (shameless plug for my blog layout: http://www.cachestocaches.com/2017/3/complete-guide-email-emacs-using-mu-and-/ http://www.cachestocaches.com/2017/3/complete-guide-email-em...)
  - AndrewStephens 10y ago
    That is a pretty sweet theme. I was going for a more spartan look, without a menu down the left hand side. I even debated not having a header but that seemed a little too bare.
- Mz 10y ago
  As a blogger, my experience has been different from yours, but I sincerely appreciate you giving us the information you gave us above (in your top comment). Let me suggest the following in place of your current intro: "Hi, I'm Andrew Stephens, a programmer living in Boston, USA. This is my blog of random musings. You can contact me via email, Twitter, or LinkedIn." But only include those contact details IF they can actually reliably get hold of you that way. If you ONLY check your email, then ONLY list your email and not the other two. (Your current wording suggests "good luck with that!") People can figure out for themselves that there are no comments, that this page is your index, etc. Those comments add zero value and just give a wall of mostly useless text. If there is a funny story behind the URL, you could include a really brief synopsis of it, such as "I bought this URL because I was inspired by Jeph Jacques' walmart.horse stunt to get a .horse domain." That would do a lot more for your blog than saying "Sorry, no info on sheep or horses."
xiaoma 10y ago
>"Then there are publications about anything and everything. There is no topic." It's a blog. In this case the topic is the author. That was really common in when that one was started and I enjoy that kind of blog over one designed around a very narrow interest any day. As Andrew pointed out, though, Facebook and others have captured a lot of people's attention and pushed personal blogs into the periphery.

jszymborski 10y ago

I'm sorry, but I heartily disagree re: style. I love it. I was just about to write a comment to commend it. Love the way you handle underlines, the font is pleasant, the sidenotes are awesome and I like your background color. I do agree that the some structure would help with retention, if you're interested in that.