Simplicity Blog Review & Renovations

Yes, I know -- things keep changing around here, and I keep talking about how things keep changing around here. I've not even addressed the Watermark reviews at The Weblog Review. I'll talk about those later, but today -- Skellie; her blog is my best find since I came back online.

Skellie did a Simplicity Review of Watermark, and I've implemented many of her suggestions. She has given permission to post her email, which I've done below the cut so those of you who are getting bored with all this can ignore it.

You might be sorry to miss it, though -- at least this, her summary paragraph:

A good overall principle is to understand that your visitors, collectively, have only a certain amount of attention. The less you have to distract them, the more attention the items you do have will get. I'd always suggest emphasizing what is most important to you, because it will help your visitors to do the same.

Also, I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have about what has, and hasn't, been changed. More specifically:

Hi SB,

Now that I've finally torn myself away from your writing I should probably start on the review!

Excellent beginning!

Here are some suggestions for increasing the simplicity of your site and reducing the clutter.

1. Remove the table borders. At the moment they drag at the eye slightly, interrupting the whitespace around your words. If you want to contrast the sidebar with the content column you could add a very faint gray background to it.

I tried this, and hated it -- but it inspired me to try softening the borders, which I really like.

2. Equal spacing between items. Items on the sidebar seem to be spaced at times widely apart and at times quite close. I think one paragraph between separate items would lend the sidebar a greater sense of logic.

I think this is better now.

3. Add a smaller form for email subscriptions. At the moment the form is disappearing into the side of the sidebar, and the effect is a little jarring.

I tried to make this smaller, without luck; tried installing it differently -- no change; and further examination tells me that this is a deliberate element of the FeedBlitz design. So I'm living with it for the moment.

4. Label your additional sites. At the moment the links are beneath your RSS feed button without explanation. I think adding the heading 'My other sites' or something similar would make readers more willing to interact with them.

Um. Gosh. Why didn't I think of that?

5. . . .

6. Remove 'Email me', add a Contact page. You could put a link to the page above 'About SBPoet'. You could put other forms of contact on the page; for example, you could move your Meebo widget there, and so on.

I should note here that Skellie had previously advised me to consolidate my categories and move them to pages, with a list on the main page -- which I did. And I followed this advice, as well. The 'pages' option is fairly new at TypePad, and what a nice one it is.

I'm sure Skellie did not anticipate that such a feature would allow me to keep my widgets and images by just spreading them around, and un-minimalistically ornamenting the pages.

Let me just mention here, all errors of judgement are my own.

7. Remove unnecessary widgets. Even from the perspective of a personal site, readers will not tackle a sidebar that is too full of stuff. Here are some things I think you should consider removing: Translate (auto translators don't produce meaningful text), no. people online, Recent Comments (doesn't provide any information about what was said, or who the people are), Recent Posts (readers prefer to scroll down than interact with these), Twitter updates (I think it'd be better to simply link to your Twitter profile from your contact page),  MyBlogLog widgets (the images are, on average, about 5kb each. You have about 30 images. 30kb x 5 is a 150kb widget!...) . . .

About the widgets from MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog -- those show my readers' avatars, and I thought they linked to their sites -- but they don't. They link to their profiles at the blog networks.

So that gives me pause, and I'm still thinking about it.  I like seeing those friendly faces on my sidebar. I did cut them down by half, though.

The romlet widget does link back to the referring site -- and, when I put in a request for a feature to not include search engines, I got an email back with revised code to do just that! Yay for customer service at romlet!

So maybe the blog network widgets will go, and the romlet will stay.

. . . Everything below the collapsible menus could go too.

Ah, this is another post. Some of those things did go. More later about those that stayed.

In the meantime, check here if you'd like Skellie to do a Simplicity Review for you. She may be full up, but -- believe me -- it's worth a try.

Comments

[Skellie]

Hi SB Poet, just wanted to thank you for the kind write-up :). The review requests have slowed to a more reasonable pace so I am indeed happy to do some more for your readers.

You're done a great job so far. I think the slowly but surely method is probably the smoothest way to do it (and hopefully a little less taxing on the blogger than a complete overhaul!).

[Cathy]

Sharon, she does have good suggest but remember one thing. In the end it's your blog,

[SB]

Skellie -- yes, slowly and surely -- and thoughtfully...

Cathy -- you are right. I found myself wondering today -- I used to think Watermark was beautiful.

Do I still think that?

I'm not sure.

[Cathy]

Sorry to say the main page not fully loading at my end. The side content is not showing up. When I go to comment, then it shows up.

Put your Flickr link back on and recent comment too. I used them. I disagree with Skellie on the recent comments not being useful, They were, it was great way to see if anybody added more. And there was nothing wrong on having the Flickr badge there either.

What happen to the links to your other blogs? I don't see them ?

The only thing I would change is your banner. Didn't you have a blue one or was that the one I did. The Watermark looks a little wash out.

[SB]

Hi Cathy --

I'm hoping the problem has fixed itself at your end -- try hitting shift-reload and see if that fixes it -- if not, give me a holler.

I put Recent Comments back, because I agree with you -- I used it the same way.

The flickr badge and other sites have always been there -- I'm thinking that whatever problem is causing it to not load for you is also causing you to not see them. Tell me if you can see them now. (They've moved.)

The banner -- I really like the black & white banner. Because I so often post photos and other images, it seemed to me that a colored banner conflicted with them. So -- for the moment, anyway -- black & white it is.

[Mage]

Yes, I too like your content, I like the cats, and I like the fade into the background grey borders. Yes, I like being able to follow the link to your other blogs.

The right column reflects your interests and it is the YOU that doesn't show in the days blog. At blogspot, I have kept the assorted orts ot a minimum but only because I don't know how to add all the bells and whistles. Yes, it is distracting, but yes too, it's an absolutely fascinating space that not only tells us about you but shares the you we can't see.

It all boils down to the fact that this is YOU.
Thanks for being here........Mage

[Cathy]

Sorry to report, the sidebar is still not fulling loading at the main page at home. But the sidebar did show up at work, so I'm thinking it's my dial up connection is the culprit. Well as long the main stuff comes up. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Clearly it's my end then

[Romlet]

You know, we really appreciate that positive feedback - it's quite and honor to make the cut and be kept! We also love getting feature requests so we can make Romlet better for everyone - Romlet users often think of things we didn't.

You also keyed into an essential part of what Romlet's about: linking back to visitors, not profiles. We're actually considering the idea of a 'companion' widget that displays linkbacks directly to a visitor's sites as well as just referer's sites - so, in other words: something that does exactly what you wanted the MyBlogLog widget to do!

[SB]

Mage -- Thanks so much for the encouraging & reassuring comment.

Cathy -- I moved the MyBlogLog & Blog Catalog widgets to a 'NETWORKS' page, and also put a flash item in a post under the cut -- now does it load for you?

And -- I pumped up the banner a bit, still b&w -- does it still look washed out?

Romlet -- you have a loyal user.