Author Topic: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?  (Read 2940 times)

DadJokes

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Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« on: November 19, 2019, 07:40:01 AM »
I try to check out different blogs, and many of them have an issue where less than 10% of the screen has actual content on it. The rest of the space is either ads, useless media/content, or white space.

I get the need for advertising, but the layout of the article makes it virtually unreadable for me. I pick on Fatherly in my picture below, but that blog is certainly not alone in this poor use of space. It seems pretty common in blogs, with MMM being one of the exceptions.

And no, I can't install an ad blocker on my work computer.

wespellitmoustache

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2019, 07:46:37 AM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

ysette9

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2019, 07:51:49 AM »
My good god the recipe blogs are The Worst. Scroll scroll scroll scroll.... oops, damn, I’m in the comment section and missed the recipe itself.

Sugaree

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2019, 08:05:19 AM »
I saw a food blog recently where there was a link at the top that would let you jump straight to the recipe at the bottom of the page.  That is a writer who knows what people want.

FIRE Artist

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2019, 08:19:47 AM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

yup.

I use the Paprika app to save recipes, it has no trouble finding the recipe amongst the schlock thank goodness.  It is a paid app, but I bought is a long time ago and it is worth the cost many times over.

FIRE Artist

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2019, 08:23:00 AM »
I find that many blogs are not mobile friendly, which seems like a HUGE oversight.  You often can't zoom into the text to read it, even on an iPad.  There is a popular blog that I enjoyed while on my work computer, but not on my iPad for this very reason, then they went subscription model - no way I was paying to read a blog that doesn't work on mobile devices. 

Bird In Hand

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2019, 10:02:16 AM »
@DadJokes -- the white space is actually a good thing.  If the blog content took up the entire width of that screen, it would be 1-2 extremely long lines of text.  There's a range of optimal text size and paragraph width, beyond which most people suffer from eye fatigue from scanning too far horizontally, and also start to lose track of which line they are reading as they move down the paragraph.  Not to mention that the blog text would almost completely disappear vertically when sandwiched between large and colorful ads on the top and bottom.

The real problem in this case is the small ratio of content-to-ads, and also the ads themselves.  I'm sorry you're stuck running a browser without an adblocker -- that looks atrocious.

mm1970

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2019, 10:56:01 AM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

Quote
My good god the recipe blogs are The Worst. Scroll scroll scroll scroll.... oops, damn, I’m in the comment section and missed the recipe itself.

Yes, preach!  I get it.  You have a great camera.  I do NOT need 25 photos, just give me the damn recipe.

socaso

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2019, 11:18:25 AM »
Ugh, the food writers! Some of them have a skip to the recipe button  but not many! And their writing is not good enough to justify blathering on about their day. I cringe at some of the typos and misused words.

Noodle

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2019, 08:22:36 AM »
You might like an RSS feed reader, like Feedly. (Google Reader was another example, now sadly defunct.) I don't know enough to explain how it works, but basically it's a website that you can tell what blogs you read, and it will gather the new entries in one place. Depending on how the blog owner has set things up, you may either see a few sentences before you're asked to click through (so you can at least tell if it's worth going to) or you may get to read the whole entry, in which case it strips out the ads and sidebars and gives it to you in a very clean format. I'm occasionally shocked when I click through to an actual blog and realize how messy and distracting it is!

For recipes specifically, there are a couple things you can do. If you use Chrome as your desktop browser, there is an extension that will detect sites with recipes and pull them up in a separate window so you don't have to wade through all the junk. If you are using a tablet or phone, I will usually click the "print" button (nearly all recipe blogs have them) which causes a new tab to pop up with just the recipe. You can then press "cancel" on the printer info and you get a nice clean window with just the recipe and no extraneous videos, ads, etc. That's what I do when I'm actually cooking.

Metalcat

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #10 on: November 21, 2019, 09:28:40 AM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

yup.

I use the Paprika app to save recipes, it has no trouble finding the recipe amongst the schlock thank goodness.  It is a paid app, but I bought is a long time ago and it is worth the cost many times over.

Paprika is amazing.

It's worth the $25 to never have to read the bullshit about how much the blogger's husband likes cuddling with the dog on snowy days. *barf*

I also love how Paprika puts the ingredients next to the recipe so I don't have to scroll back and forth over and over again to see the steps and the measurements.

Ugh, I love Paprika so much.
K...sorry, I'll stop derailing the thread.

Blogs...yes...messy....
That's why I don't read them.

DadJokes

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #11 on: November 21, 2019, 09:33:15 AM »
I do hate everything about recipe pages, including going back and forth between the steps and the ingredients. Normally, if I make something once and like it, I make a recipe card.

However, this Paprika sounds amazing. I'll have to try it out.

mathlete

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #12 on: November 21, 2019, 09:37:20 AM »
Yes. It's part of the ongoing suckification of the Internet. At the risk of sounding like an ancient old man, Mr Money Mustache's website is a great example of how most websites used to be. Clean. Quick loading. Content makes up the bulk of the screen. Etc.

I would like it if you could pay a fee to get an ad-free version of the Internet. I have a Washington Post subscription, and their website is very enjoyable to use. I want to be able to do that but for all websites.

mathlete

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2019, 09:39:50 AM »
The websites for the major sports leagues are terrible as well. I don't even use them anymore.

The sports-reference family of websites provides stats for most major sports leagues. The websites look like they were made in 1998. And it's amazing. Before high speed internet was ubiquitous, you had to show restraint when making a website, so that people's connections could actually load it.

neo von retorch

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #14 on: November 21, 2019, 09:48:35 AM »
My solution is to use Firefox, uBlock Origin, optionally uMatrix, and use Firefox's reading mode which is available on most web sites with articles. See examples from your sample site in my attachments.

Also note - white space on either side is a good thing. Long lines of text are harder to read!

Attachments:
First is just Firefox view of the Fatherly.com web site with ads blocked by uBlock Origin. The second is "reading view" enabled which removes distractions and uses a standard/consistent font and format to display the content.

If you cannot use Firefox + extensions on your work computer, you probably shouldn't read blogs ;)

afox

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #15 on: November 21, 2019, 11:29:35 AM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

OMG, I was going to write the same thing.

There is a bigger problem with the food blogs though: Ive found that the recipes often have errors and were obviously not tested. Ive found this at least twice recently. So, I write a comment that the amount of X ingredient is off, should have been X amount instead of X amount and guess what, the comments dont show up, they get moderated by the blog owner who doesn't want negative comments on their blog. There was a good NPR story about the Joy of Cooking and how much time/editing/testing that goes into creating the recipes/content. Can you imagine if the joy of cooking has blatant errors of amounts of ingredients. There is a major problem with a lack of curated web content.

Metalcat

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #16 on: November 21, 2019, 01:45:36 PM »
I'm with you, it's infuriating. My personal pet hate is food bloggers. I understand the need to monetise the blogs, but not only are there often an abundance of ads but usually also a small novel describing the blogger's husband's dogs favourite spatula with amazon affiliate link, a million photos of the process, photos of their cat, a detailed history of their mental health struggles etc etc. I JUST NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY ONIONS TO BUY! And then of course you sift through the hundreds of comments posted by other bloggers purely to advertise their own blogs ("This looks great...can't wait to try it. I used that very spatula to make my famous pancakes [LINK]") to find a few genuine comments to say the recipe didn't work for them at all. I stick to BBCGoodFood or Allrecipes for the most part these days.

OMG, I was going to write the same thing.

There is a bigger problem with the food blogs though: Ive found that the recipes often have errors and were obviously not tested. Ive found this at least twice recently. So, I write a comment that the amount of X ingredient is off, should have been X amount instead of X amount and guess what, the comments dont show up, they get moderated by the blog owner who doesn't want negative comments on their blog. There was a good NPR story about the Joy of Cooking and how much time/editing/testing that goes into creating the recipes/content. Can you imagine if the joy of cooking has blatant errors of amounts of ingredients. There is a major problem with a lack of curated web content.

I don't see blog recipes as anything other than guidelines and suggestions.

DadJokes

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #17 on: November 25, 2019, 07:34:34 AM »
You might like an RSS feed reader, like Feedly. (Google Reader was another example, now sadly defunct.) I don't know enough to explain how it works, but basically it's a website that you can tell what blogs you read, and it will gather the new entries in one place. Depending on how the blog owner has set things up, you may either see a few sentences before you're asked to click through (so you can at least tell if it's worth going to) or you may get to read the whole entry, in which case it strips out the ads and sidebars and gives it to you in a very clean format. I'm occasionally shocked when I click through to an actual blog and realize how messy and distracting it is!

For recipes specifically, there are a couple things you can do. If you use Chrome as your desktop browser, there is an extension that will detect sites with recipes and pull them up in a separate window so you don't have to wade through all the junk. If you are using a tablet or phone, I will usually click the "print" button (nearly all recipe blogs have them) which causes a new tab to pop up with just the recipe. You can then press "cancel" on the printer info and you get a nice clean window with just the recipe and no extraneous videos, ads, etc. That's what I do when I'm actually cooking.

Feedly is awesome and has solved the issue- thanks!

FIRE Artist

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #18 on: November 25, 2019, 12:00:03 PM »
I do hate everything about recipe pages, including going back and forth between the steps and the ingredients. Normally, if I make something once and like it, I make a recipe card.

However, this Paprika sounds amazing. I'll have to try it out.

 I see that Paprika is on sale this week for Thanksgiving.  I upgraded to the Version 3 for my ipad/phones because I am interested in the pantry feature that is not on my first generation version.  It is much more expensive for the desktop version ($21 vs $4), I have never thought I wanted that though.  I love it so much, that after having it for 7 years, I am happy to pay for it again. 

soccerluvof4

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #19 on: November 26, 2019, 04:19:41 AM »
I have to agree with most people here. I dont mind most blogs but recipe blogs are insane and seems like it never fails when your in the heat of the moment the damn thing skips or a pop up comes on. So frustrating. I'd rather have the more blank sides.

Metalcat

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #20 on: November 26, 2019, 05:25:36 AM »
I have to agree with most people here. I dont mind most blogs but recipe blogs are insane and seems like it never fails when your in the heat of the moment the damn thing skips or a pop up comes on. So frustrating. I'd rather have the more blank sides.

I made the mistake of using my phone to read a recipe online instead of taking the time to import it into Paprika (which takes less than a minute, btw), and I was so frustrated with scrolling back and forth and closing pop ups, which would make the page jump to another section and at one point I yelled at the screen "I don't give a fuck that your youngest son hates green beans!!!"

GreenSheep

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #21 on: November 27, 2019, 06:58:01 PM »
I use a ton of recipes from the internet. Call me old-fashioned(ish), but here's what I do. When I spot one that looks good, I copy the link and the recipe itself into an email that I send to myself, with the name of the recipe as the subject line. It then goes into a Recipes folder (okay, I'm actually more nerdy than that -- I have a bunch of folders for different types of recipes -- soups, desserts, breakfast, etc.). Then, when I'm looking for something new to make, I pull up the email and refer to it while writing my grocery list and making the food itself. If it's excellent enough, I copy it into a Word document in which I have a massive list of all of the winners, categorized (nerd alert) by season and type of dish.

Most good food bloggers do have a "jump to recipe" button, and I actually like reading a blurb about their own life if it's one of the few I've been following for years. What kills me are the photos of each individual step. I don't need to know what the onions look like before and after cooking! That seems to be a recent thing, so my guess is that a bunch of people who are clueless in the kitchen requested such photos. Good for them for trying to become un-clueless, but it's mind-numbing for those of us who don't need such detailed instruction. But I guess I can't complain if there's a "jump to recipe" button.

sailinlight

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #22 on: November 27, 2019, 07:04:29 PM »
Thanks for the recommendation for Paprika. That is an awesome app!

anotherAlias

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #23 on: November 28, 2019, 04:08:54 AM »
OMG! Thank you for recommending paprika.  I've been using pepperplate for a few years but it has always had a few quirks that I hated.  Paprika solves all of them. The recipe capture is amazing.  I've always dreaded adding new recipes because it's such a pain to do from my mobile devices.....not any more.  Hell, I would have paid full price for this but 50% off is even better.  Best Black Friday purchase ever!

Metalcat

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #24 on: November 28, 2019, 07:21:37 AM »
OMG! Thank you for recommending paprika.  I've been using pepperplate for a few years but it has always had a few quirks that I hated.  Paprika solves all of them. The recipe capture is amazing.  I've always dreaded adding new recipes because it's such a pain to do from my mobile devices.....not any more.  Hell, I would have paid full price for this but 50% off is even better.  Best Black Friday purchase ever!

Thanks for the heads up about the sale, I've been considering getting it for my phone as well.

Bateaux

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Re: Am I the only one frustrated by the formatting of most blogs?
« Reply #25 on: November 28, 2019, 07:28:20 AM »
I rarely read personal blogs.  If they have an associated podcast or youtube channel I'll use those.  Sometimes I only go to a blog to see something they posted, that was mentioned on the podcast.