I recently “attended” a webinar about music websites. Tonight as I ventured around wordpress exploring blogs that were recommended to me, as well as numerous other blogs (you know how one leads to another, then another), I realized I have two recommendations about the actual blog sites. These two things were brought up at the music website webinar; I noticed the same definitely applies for blog sites:
* Do not use white text and / or elaborate fonts on a black or other dark color background as it is way too hard on the eyes. There was one blog tonight that could have had fabulous content but I will never know because I could not stand to read more than 2 sentences on the page. 😦
* Be sure readers can find your “follow” or sign up for e-mail notice button easily. I actually searched for minutes and never did find one on a couple blogs. 😦
I feel bad for these bloggers. Great writing could be missed out on, due to simple readability and accessibility issues. Make it easy for us, we don’t want to miss out on your great content!
wanton word flirt 
Good points. I too have trouble reading blogs where the background is darker than the text, or the font is too small to read comfortably. I may still follow these blogs, but I don’t enjoy them as much as I like. Thanks for posting this 🙂
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I realized after writing this post that my son’s music website is white print on black, so went to have another look at it. It seems white on black is okay, very easily readable on his site because the font size is large and plain, whereas the writing sites I could not read easily on wordpress had tiny font size, and very elaborate fonts (almost like cursive writing) so either one, or the two combined made it very difficult to read much at all. Another thing I would suggest bloggers stay away from is neon font, saw neon green on black. Yikes!
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Yep. *smile* Readability for sure. I also think that in long, text heavy posts, formatting and readability are key. I have to admit to being a big “skimmer”. Unfortunately, even if it is something I really want to read, if it is a big heavy block of text, I am likely to leave it for “later”. Unless I can easily follow a blog to get myself back there – “later” might never come.
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Hello Samira! Thanks for stopping by. I agree with you, if a blog is very long, I tend to do the same thing, just skim, say I will return and then “sometime later” never comes. I realize my first two blog entries here were too long. I will attempt to keep much shorter as I go forward. I just stopped by your blog and see you do “short and sweet” very well.
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Good advice, Suzanne…I need to chop my blog entries into smaller sections. I tend to pick my topic, choose the recipes, but by the time each part is complete, it has taken a very long time to edit and probably is too much to digest at a time. (wink, wink!) I’m enjoying reading your blog!
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Hello Jennifer, thanks for checking out my blog! I have never felt your blog was too much to digest all at once. (wink, wink right back at ya!) Probably because you always have such great photos to go with the text, the stories that go with your recipes are always interesting, and then the actual recipe / directions also break up the text as well. BTW I loved your blog about the food truck….was one of my all time faves!
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