so what?

hmmm... will you get offended if i say i hate your blog? ok, let's put it on constructive criticism...
it's not that it is annoying, it's just sooo stupid.

so often i come across blogs which look just the same. sometimes i'm actually wondering if it's the same person that put up tens of blogs just because. so these are the characteristics (please note all of them are either stupid, useless, naive or annoying):

600 px wide
big BIG header image which generally requires you to scroll down just to read the first entry
the font is 3 to 4 px, forcing us to scale it sometimes even twice
the first entry itself often being of the kind "hey finally the new layout is up"
the second entry being "hi all nothing special happened to me"
the third entry often not existing
the sidebar starting with some facts about the blogger
the sidebar following with some "current mood:/listening to:/etc." stuff
some information about when the domain was acquired
a different page with exit links
some thousands of different ways to contact the blogger
generally some brushes or icon sets are also available for download
buttons provided to link back the site

now some characteristics about the blogger itself, which should make you think (especially if you are a psychologist/sociologist):

girl (very rarely it's a boy)
16-17 year old (but it can go down to 14)
living in the US or in Canada
with paintshop and web design skills

now is it some kind of new wave in blogging? a blogging 2.0? am i getting old? don't think so...

get a decent header, no more then 150-200 px
make the font readable. size it about 80% (don't use em's, there are issues with IE)
ok for a few words about yourself, but just do it in a different way
links in the FRONT page! i'm navigating through blogs, i don't want to go to a second useless page just to exit-click to another blog
nobody gives a fuck about technical information on your host
nobody gives a fuck about current mood/listing to stuff. posts are the place where you should write about your current mood!
rather make a "suggested song" kind of thing
content BEFORE styling, especially if styling is bad
don't change the cursor to stupid shapes, like a diagonal double arrow when i roll over links. that's just so annoying you can't imagine
who is ever going to use a button to link to a little blog? i can imagine that some of your (online) friends will do it but it's stupid as well because it just takes up spaces and messes up the links

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