Kerfuffles

Two Years of Reading Travelblogs. What Catches My Eye Now?

Shortly after the BlogHer 08 conference, I met fellow Seattelite Debbie from Delicious Baby. We talked about a bunch of stuff that’s relevant to travelbloggers including what makes me, in my role as the contributing editor for this site, pay attention. Debbie suggested that I post my guidelines. What makes me stop and take notice? What makes a travelblog leap off the travel list here on the BlogHer site and on to my own blogroll? (And did you know, I see every new blog that’s added? When you add your blog, I know, and I click. Secret powers.) Over two years ago (!!!!), I complied a list. It’s time to revisit it.

A disclaimer: It should go without saying, but this is personal opinion only. You go ahead and do what you want with your blog, it’s your playground, your self-expression. This list tells you what *I* look for, not some talent scout, not BlogHer as an organization diflucan online, not some blogstar maker, just me. Got it? Okay then.

Volunteer TV WVLT 8 Knoxville
Knoxville, Tennessee - Breaking News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic … Knox County high school student dies after incident at school: Last Updated: 9:11 PM 08/18/08 - A Karns High …

Here’s what I said in 2006 followed with some updated comments.

1. Make it physically readable, for starters. I can’t read pink text on a yellow background, for example. And sometimes, wow, there is so much going on that I can barely find the text.

Wow, does this matter more than ever! Just this week I had my specs updated, again. My 40 something eyes are doing what my doc tells me is perfectly normal but don’t think I’m not pissed as hell about it. That means no, I can not read your tiny white san serif text on the black background, no matter HOW much I zoom. Think of the reader. Won’t somebody please think of the reader!

WVLT VOLUNTEER TV Knoxville, TN: ABOUT US
If you want to get more information about the people of WVLT VOLUNTEER TV News, here’s where you’ll find it! More >> WVLT Volunteer TV WVLT’s parent company named one of best in …

Jill stanek

Winthrop Resources : Volunteer
The Volunteers… A Dedicated Team Committed to Service. Offering an interesting variety of rewarding and meaningful volunteer opportunities, the Hospital provides a forum in which …

2. Minimize the design toys, please. Everyone wants a custom blog, but if you don’t really know what you’re doing, you just end up with noise. There are lots of perfectly acceptable templates to use, it’s not a crime to use them, especially if you’re a good writer. I want to read you, not hire you as a designer. This goes for all those widgets too. I’m a minimalist, still. I get that all the sidebar candy can help build community, I get that you want to share the love. I get why you lke those things. I totally do. But as a reader, that stuff hurts my eyes. Think long and hard before you put something on the page. What does it offer your reader? What does it offer you? Do you know? You should.

WVLT-TV - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WVLT-TV (VHF channel is "Volunteer TV", a CBS television network affiliate serving Knoxville, Tennessee, the 58th DMA in America according to Nielsen Media Research. The station’s owned and operated by Gray Television and has its transmitter’s located in Knoxville. The station also operates a MyNetworkTV affiliate MyVLT2 on its DT2 digital sub-channel; before 2006, it was a UPN affiliate, branded as UPN Knoxville.History · Vol Network Affiliation · Newscast & Station … · Logo History

LifeChurch.tv is a multi-site church with campuses all across the country as well as a campus that meets entirely on the Internet. The mission of the church is to lead people to …

3. Reading itineraries is really boring, unless they’re mine. I skip right over blogs that list where the writer went without telling me anything about happened there. These things get hidden in entries - first we went to the Museum, then the park, then we took the subway back to the old part of the city…. Meh. Doesn’t tell me anything. What did you do, see, eat there?

Updates: No changes here. This is still completely true.

4. Turns out I do want to see a picture of you, who knew? I love the surprise of seeing that some big dude in a Hawaiian shirt and a silly hat is writing culturally sensitive stories about visiting holy sites. Or some hard core outdoors climber is a woman of a “certain age.”

Updates: Same deal. Still totally true.

5. Speaking of pictures, bring ‘em. It’s nice when there are thumbnails in the posts, or a single photo up top, and then, after reading, I can go click through to an album. I don’t care for it when people use a linear blog format for photoblogs, however, there are better ways to present photos only. If you’re keeping a photoblog, use a tool that’s designed for it, not one that’s designed for text.

I’ve become a bit more forgiving on this because, I admit it, I love seeing your travel pictures. Love it. I’m the neighbor who will sit through the three hour slide show of your trip to the Mall of America. Crazy, but true. Do pay a little attention to what’s happening when you use text and photos together - sometimes if the photos are too big you’ll end up with a paragraph stacked along one skinny edge and that’s too hard to read. Rather than fuss about how you present your photos, now I’d just like you to make sure they don’t break your readability.

6. In general - though not always - I tend to breeze past Live Journal and My Space blogs. Sorry, but mostly, I’m not seeing compelling reading in those implementations, or they’re too noisy to read.

Yup, this is still true. I also tend to avoid the travelblog hosts - not because I don’t like them, but because something about the way that content is indexed means I rarely find it. This is a shame because there’s good stuff in there, I’m quite sure of it. So I guess I’d add that I pay attention buy cheap topamax mostly to self hosted stand alone blogs. Mostly. It’s not 100% true but if you’re at your own URL, you’re easier for me to find.

7. Negativity can be okay as long as it’s not cultural imperialism. “Oh my god, I ate the most disgusting thing ever!” is all right as long as it’s fol …

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