My idea of a perfect blog

Back in April, OregonLive.com asked me to do a bike blog that covered the Portland bike scene.  At first it was fun because I was just learning the ropes.  But as I delved more deeply into the blogging scene, researched blogs at length, and gained more blogging experience, I began to realize that the Bike Fun blog was lacking in many important ways.  I believed a Portland bike blog had vast potential but the Bike Fun blog - because of its limited functionality - was not allowing me to achieve it.  So on June 28th I left OregonLive.com and started BikePortland.org.  In a recent email, my former editor at OregonLive.com - perhaps wondering why I decided to leave - asked me this question; "what is your idea of the perfect blog?"  Here's my response.

The perfect blog should have...

• Open comments (easily moderated, edited, deleted by the author).
• Trackback links.
• A loyal following that leaves frequent comments.
• A cross-browser compatible design.
• Easy feed (RSS) sign-up buttons for major services (Bloglines, MyYahoo, MyMsn, etc...).
• Ability for visitors to sign up to email updates.
• Polls.
• Permalinks.
• Some sort of photo-sharing capability.
• Three column layout.
• Integrated search (not Google-based like this blog).
• Categories.
  
• Custom designed theme.
• Intuitive URLs.
• Posts with many outbound links.
• Well-written post titles.
• Proper posting etiquette, format and style.
• A well-defined niche topic and credible author.
• A tastefully integrated revenue stream (text ads, banners (no animation), merchandise, etc...)

If you're considering starting a blog, you might use this list as a starting point.  If you're already a blogger, feel free to add your ideas because I'm sure I've left some things out.  In the coming weeks, I'll take a closer look at some of these items.  I'll explain what they are and why I feel they're so vital to the success of a blog.

Comments

[Fritz]

I guess implicit in the easy-signup feed buttons is the basic requirement for an RSS feed. I still run across plenty of blogs that don't even have this.

MSN Spaces blogs require MSN .NET Passport registration to log comments. Bad bad bad.

[Nick Douglas]

Great list. But one item bothers me - when have you found intuitive URLs important? I blog heavily, read heavily, and link heavily, but I can't recall ever needing to manually type a post URL, or liking or hating a certain URL format.

Kyle and Jeremy are working on several of your items for Blogebrity. We just opened up commenting, we run polls, and we're launching a redesign later this year.

[Jonathan Maus]

Nick:
I listed intuitive URLs because I'm a big fan of Flickr. They've got great URLs that make sense and act like a built-in, bread crumb system. Just by looking at the URL I can tell where I'm at in the bigger picture.

I also think good URLs are more helpful to advanced users who actually look at them before clicking.

Lastly, good URLs are helpful in search results because the title of the post is often including in them.

Thanks for your comment.