Advice for Bloggers

Ishaan kindly nominated me for a Blogger Recognition Award, but rather than accept the award (which requires one to comply fully with various rules*), I thought I would more simply share three pieces of advice for bloggers (which is at least one of the rules), or rather, my requests to them/you.

These are things I’ve written about before, so I will link to those posts where available so you can find more detail.

• Sort out your Gravatar

“What is Gravatar?” you may ask. Check out your icon when you comment or like someone’s blog here on WordPress; see where it leads. More often than not it will lead to a Gravatar page. Can you get to your own blog from there? It is disappointing to me when all I find is someone’s picture.

• Resize your pictures (before uploading them)

If you upload a picture to your blog straight from your digital camera, for example, place it on a post and resize it there to fit, every visitor to that page will be downloading the image at full resolution (even if they don’t see it that way), and this takes time, especially if you have a page full of such images. Resize them before uploading; they’ll upload quicker and appear quicker for visitors – they may even appear clearer too. Not everyone has lightning-fast broadband and a few times now I’ve found myself leaving someone’s blog because the images they use hog my bandwidth.

• Create an About page

In addition to reading interesting posts I like to gain some further perspective by learning a little about the author; it’s especially useful when I visit someone’s blog for the first time. An About page is a great way to gain some insight, plus, it might better encourage visitors to leave a comment or subscribe, but remain a stranger and they might not. Check out the Pages section of your WordPress Dashboard. Try to remember to revisit your About page from time to time to ensure it remains up-to-date.

I did a shout-out to some fellow bloggers and awarded them too back in March of last year, so feel free to check those out, perhaps I’ll re-visit that idea.

*in addition to rule compliance, one is also building a pyramid – this more an amusement to me than a criticism…