Can’t believe we missed this one: in an old post from 2005, Jeff Atwood (via Coding Horror) points us to an interesting set of the top ten blog design mistakes, which themselves come from Jakob Neilsen. Check out how many we’ve failed at, and see how many you might be missing.

No Author Biographies

I’ve been pushing for this one for a while. For example, I’m Jon Canady, and I’m a software developer for Innova Partners. Beyond that, you know nothing about my credentials or qualifications. Furthermore, since Innova uses this blog to lure awesome developers into working for us, it’d be nice to be able to read about your potential future coworkers.

No Author Photo

Same vein as the last one — blogs need photos. Again, because we’re trying to hire people, it’s that much more important that people be able to match words with faces when they come in for a code day.

Nodescript Posting Titles

I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but the title of the post really should be a quick summary of it’s contents. Otherwise, you have no idea if you want to read the post or not, which means you’re more likely to skip it.

Links Don’t Say Where They Go

I’ve trained myself, when I see a link like this one to hover over it and look at the status bar to see the URL. However, if the link were formatted properly (share your photos here), then I’d probably fall out of that habit. I’d still get hit with random goatse links, though. Eew.

Classic Hits Are Buried

For example, did you know we have an excellent post that outlines our SQL interview question that so far nobody has answered correctly? No? That’s because it’s old, and unless you have the time to browse through all the posts here, you’d miss it.

The Calendar Is The Only Navigation

We try to avoid this one by using real categories. Not just a bunch of tags that we slop onto every post, but real categories. This post is in the design category, for example. No confusion.

Irregular Publishing Frequency

This one’s a no brainer. Fresh content keeps people at your site. Stale content makes them think you’ve abandoned it. Sometimes, at least here at Innova, real work distracts us from the joys of blogging. We’re trying to fix that.

Mixing Topics

Go read Coding Horror. All the posts are about technology, and most are probably about software. Now go find a random MySpace (shudder) page. Notice how it’s about nothing in particular? Yeah, that sucks.

Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

Technically, I’m writing for my current boss, but if I post something on my personal blog about the embarrassing time I table-danced for a friend, it’s possible a future employer might see it. Follow a simple rule: if you wouldn’t want your Grandmother to see it, don’t post it on a public forum.

Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Neilsen seems to think that having a blogger.com (or blogspot, or whatever) subdomain seems to cheapen your blog. It certainly doesn’t add any class, and it does have that “@aol.com” feel to it, but sometimes it helps, especially if you don’t want to go through the “hassle” of setting up your own blog software, or don’t want to pay someone else to do it. Back in the day I had a killfile that rejected most ‘@aol.com’ emails that weren’t on a whitelist. But I’m not yet rejecting all ‘.livejournal.com’ blogs. (I do, however, avoid MySpace. It’s the Devil.)