Does your blog contain annoying elements?

Confession: I do blogwalking religiously.

I do it almost everyday. Okay, maybe not religious enough? Haha. Well the thing is, I find that a number of blogs contain somewhat annoying elements. Some elements are too annoying that I would not hesitate to close the tab the moment it appears. Some elements are bearable, but staying too long on the blog may cause diarrhea. Sheesh!

Because I have kept this to myself for a little too long now, here goes a list of what annoys me most during my spree of stalking blogs in no particular order.

Auto-play music

Leave the Myspace users in Myspace, and your blog in a BLOG! Your blog SHOULD NOT be a Myspace!

This is one of the most annoying features in any blog. People could be in the office, have the volume really loud, playing iTunes on their desktop OR they just don’t have the same taste in music as you! Be considerate and don't force your taste of music on your readers, please.

Pop-ups

Whether it is a pop-up to greet your readers when they first open your blog, or advertorial, pop-up doesn’t interest people at all. In fact, I would quickly click away from any pop-up because it is a distraction from the subject of interest.

Disabling right-click

I just don’t get why bloggers love to disable right-clicks for the external links. Wouldn’t it be better if you just leave it as it is? By disabling right-clicks, you are only making your readers LEAVE YOUR BLOG earlier because they would just left-click and go (unless whatever they click opens up in a new tab). I normally do right-clicks because I prefer opening multiple tabs and reading each blog carefully. So please, don’t chase your readers away.

Too many ads/widgets/items on the sidebars

Your sidebar should be clean and simple. When there are too many ads and/or widgets placed in your sidebars, your blog might as well experience a slow loading time. This can frustrate new readers and they might leave even before the contents load. Plus, I would not bother to browse through your sidebars if it’s too crowded, or colourful. You’re trying to hard to impress, but it’s not working!

In-text advertising

In-text advertising is sort of like a combination of two annoying subjects above – pop up and ads. It's the pop-ups that show up when you hover over a link.


Another example I came across is when you hover over a link and it displays, “You have the nth most popular outgoing link.” Seriously, why would I care? Oh, same goes to snap previews. Enough said, google it.

Self-playing videos

Honestly, I don’t like it when Nuffnang’s blog writes about a new movie preview that comes with a self-playing video trailer. I prefer it to be optional because; don’t we read the content first before looking at the video??? It’s worst when you open up several posts in new tabs at the same time, and EACH video is playing at the background! Plus, it EATS AWAT my bandwidth. It would be nice if Nuffnang could re-consider this option. Heh.

Too much embedded crap

Like I have mentioned, you’re trying TOO HARD to impress us, the readers. But seriously, I wouldn’t bother to continue reading if your blog loads slowly or TOTALLY STOPS loading because you have too many embedded crap like external gifs that won’t load anyway!

Blinking text

HELLO, blinking text is SOOOO YESTERDAY! Ouch. Mah-eyeszzz!

So tell me, does your blog contain any of the so-called annoying elements? You can BEG to differ! Haha!