Operating from a sidebar-less site so recently fashioned, it may seem incongruous to be spitting out this list from a … sidebar-less site so recently fashioned. Fortunately, the resulting amusement derived from one of the less amusing self-contradictions evoked in the history of requisite opening paragraphs allows for a quick, embarrassed shuffling of feet, before an eventual moving on to the actual list within an actual majority’s reading patience threshold of eyeball-rolling.
5. Blog directory ranking buttons
So, you’re ranked third in the such-and-such section of a decent online blog directory. This seemingly consequential directory has even been generous enough to provide you with a shiny button – blinking text, glossy finish and all – which allows you to flash from your sidebar your consequential status to the world.
Hell, once you join every other blog directory out there, you’ll be granted a whole picket fence of randomly numbered buttons ranking you among sites you happen to never have heard of, but all of whom will no doubt join you in your journey in being blown out of the muddy waters of blogging anonymity.
Not quite.
Truth is, many blog directories out there exist merely to lap up your backlinks, and act as a playground for spam sites. More importantly, there are a near-plethora of true top blogs which are listed to the amount of nil in these directories. People with a healthy brain trust of neuron clusters instilled with common sense are aware of this, which in turn accordingly adjusts their own grading of you as a desperate amateur.
Cull them all.
4. Individual feed service subscriber buttons
Thankfully, another prevalent sidebar picket fence ideology, based on the common belief that the majority of site visitors require constant assistance on a brain-prepping front, has in recent times been a dying one.
In less styrofoam-padded terms, individual feed service subscriber buttons are useless to the only group of people who could ever make use of them. Those who know their way around Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, Netvibes and so on won’t – or, at best, will only use once – your buttons conveniently linked to their preferred online feed reading service.
Now consider the probable vast number of your subscribers who use desktop feed readers. And still more, those who are unaware of how feed subscription even works.
One subscriber button is enough.
3. Polls (of Ajax-ian, irrelevant proportions)
Many bloggers can come up with an interesting question and some humorous multiple-choice answers off the top of their post-wrangling heads. Further along, many within that cluster can concoct a poll with a semblance of resemblance to their main content.
Most, however, lack in the most crucial department – giving people a reason to give a shit.
Sure, it’s nice to be able to contribute something on-site to a blog you love besides comments. When it comes to your site, however, unless a poll contributes or will contribute to one of your posts and the overall theme of your blog, or is designed in a way such as to be relevant –
Not relevant – Do you: (i) love your job; (ii) hate your job; (iii) not have a job; or (iv) witty joke about quitting your job at the point of voting?
Relevant – Are you a [insert list of occupations applicable to your readership]?
– then, by a rather large stretch of the imagination, it is irrelevant to your sidebar.
2. Blogrolls (of never-ending, ad-disguising proportions)
There are two types of sites to be found within a blogroll:
- Ubiquitous blogs which are all cancelled out by their overarching eminence; and
- Anonymous blogs which as yet have yet to blip across the radar of those orbiting the stratosphere of your site.
The former types – other than serving as a ready palate of your online reading tastes – are useless. The latter types – other than serving as a ready palate of your online reading tastes which you hope to pass onto others – are useless if they surpass the extent of your linking goodwill in size, and have nothing provided in the way of an idea on what each site is about.
While adding short descriptions in your blogroll may seem like an idiotic suggestion in a post about cutting down on sidebar superfluousness, if you insist on keeping your blogroll, then give your readers a reason to use it the way you want: becoming interested in and clicking on the links therein.
And don’t presume to treat anyone like an idiot by throwing text link ads into the mix.
1. Ads (of multifarious proportions, if not nefarious purposes)
“Don’t visit my site, then.”
“Well, gee, put ads on your own site if you feel so left out.”
“Not Adblock Plus! I have kids to feed/student loans to pay/put so much time into this site!”
In order to avoid similar confrontation sparked from my past diatribes against site ads, and also to address my last point in the last section, I have nothing against text link ads, or pretty much any ad so long as it can be guaranteed that it has at least some winking relation to what you write about.
If you just can’t help what kind of ads appear on your site, then no problem. You still get the ad revenue, and I get the message that you aren’t getting any closer to caring about your readers.
Conclusion: the default concept required in all design-culling posts
Give a user too many choices, and they will end up making none.
Blog directory ranking buttons, individual feed service subscriber buttons, polls, blogrolls and ads are hardly crimes against web-savvy humanity. However, if they were to be thrown into a mixed bag of sidebar choices including –
- A short excerpt about yourself or your site
- Contact information
- Search bar
- Recent posts
- Popular posts
- Categories list
– they should lose every time.
Reduce the sidebar choices available to your readers down to the bare necessities. The rest is noise.
