Blog guidelines
I like to think of myself as a “poweruser”. One of the things I do is aggregate RSS feeds from all over, and read them in Google Reader on my Macbook, and in Feeds on my iPhone. After doing this for some time now, I’ve realized there are a few issues that really tick me off when reading (or choosing not to read) some blogs. Below I’ve outlined some of these issues.
Publish an RSS feed
If you provide updates regularly, and anyone cares about them, publish an RSS feed. There’s no excuse for not publishing one. With Wordpress and the abundance of opensource scripts, there’s no reason you shouldn’t publish one.
Use descriptive titles
Users do not want to have to go to your site to see what an article is about, that’s why they’re using RSS. Don’t piss off your users just to get them to come to your site.
Publish summaries for every feed item, even videos and pictures
This follows the same reasoning as using descriptive titles. Users might not want to or be able to look at pictures or videos directly from their RSS reader. Provide a concise description so users can decide whether or not they want to view the article; otherwise, they’ll probably default to not viewing it.
Link directly to the feed item, not the homepage
Probably one of the most frustrating things is click into an article, and being sent to the feed’s homepage. The user is then forced to hunt down the article, or, more likely, not read it. Always always always, link directly to the article, and not to the homepage, a category page, or any other page. Also, link directly to the full article, not a summary, or a slimmed down one.
Publish videos in the most common format or multiple formats
There are no video formats that are supported on every single device on the market, but there are some pretty popular ones. I recommend publishing videos to Youtube, and also offering a version in H.264 MP4. Always publish audio using the MP3 format.
Here are the video specifications for the iphone:
Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
And here’s the video specifications for the Blackberry Tour (newest Blackberry at time of writing):
Video format support: MPEG4 H.263, MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.264 (encoding and decoding 30fps), WMV
Show the date
Nobody likes reading an article, then realizing it’s years old. Always publish the date in your RSS feed and on your HTML pages. On your HTML pages, place the date somewhere between the title and the content. This way, a reader knows what they’re getting themselves into before they start reading.
Use RSS autodiscovery and provide obvious links just in case
Provide an RSS autodiscovery link to help users aggregate your feed. If you do this, most modern software can figure out the full RSS URL on it’s own.
Here’s what mine looks like:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Johntron Speaks RSS Feed" href="http://www.johntron.com/feed/" />
Anywho, I hope this helps someone. As always, please leave comments, suggestions, corrections, etc.
