32 Ways to keep your blog from sucking ala Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/suckless http://www.joshholmes.com/suckless.aspx

Stay relevant

1. Know your audience

2. Keep overtly personal information out of your tech blog

3. Don't apologize about not blogging enough

4. Steer clear of politics

5. Don't Blog Bile

6. Think before you blog

7. Don't post throwaways

8. Avoid "excessive quoting"

Things to Do

9. Use Spell Check

10. Pay Attention to Formatting

11. Turn on comments

12. Solve comment spam

13. Claim Your Feed

14. Decide what your Blog's URL is, and use it consistently http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ http://www.hanselman.com/blog/default.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog http://hanselman.com/blog/ http://hanselman.com/blog/default.aspx http://hanselman.com/blog http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Default.aspx http://www.computerzen.com/blog/ http://www.computerzen.com http://computerzen.com/blog/ http://computerzen.com/

15. Use Simple URLs for popular posts

16. Have a Code Garage Sale

17. License Your Blog Attribution . You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request. Example : Jane publishes her photograph with an Attribution license, because she wants the world to use her pictures provided they give her credit. Bob finds her photograph online and wants to display it on the front page of his website. Bob puts Jane’s picture on his site, and clearly indicates Jane’s authorship. Our core licensing suite will also let you mix and match conditions from the list of options below. There are a total of six Creative Commons licenses to choose from our core licensing suite. Noncommercial . You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only Examples : Gus publishes his photograph on his website with a Noncommercial license. Camille prints Gus’ photograph. Camille is not allowed to sell the print photograph without Gus’s permission. No Derivative Works . You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it. Example : Sara licenses a recording of her song with a No Derivative Works license. Joe would like to cut Sara’s track and mix it with his own to produce an entirely new song. Joe cannot do this without Sara’s permission (unless his song amounts to fair use). Share Alike . You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

18. Make it easy to subscribe

19. Have your Contact Info Somewhere

20. Have an About Me page

21. Use a Social Bookmarking Service

22. Decide What's Above the Fold

23. Integrate Google Search

24. Consider Using FeedBurner

25. Tune your Bandwidth

Things Not To Do

26. "This blog has moved"

27. Don't Break Links - Maintain Permalinks At All Costs

28. Avoid Split Brain - Pick a Blog and Stay There

29. Avoid Crossposting

30. Avoid Category Specific Feeds

31. Don't Blog to Get Rich

Conclusion

32. Blog Interesting

Josh Holmes’ Recap and additions

1. Know why you are blogging and blog to accomplish your goals .

Category 2: Make your blog easy to access, read and interact with

Content from Scott Hanselman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ http://twitter.com/shanselman http://www.hanselman.com/suckless

Slides by Josh Holmes http://www.joshholmes.com http://twitter.com/joshholmes http://www.joshholmes.com/suckless.aspx