blogs

I really dis­like see­ing this on a blog:

“Check out the rest of our [what­ever] after the jump.”

This is annoy­ing for at least 5 reasons:

1. This is intended to let peo­ple know that there is more con­tent in the “full” blog post as opposed to the “sum­mary.” The only prob­lem is that I often only read the full blog posts, because I am directed to the blog — not from the front­page — but from another web­site that links to the full post. To me, this is just annoy­ing and makes me want to stop read­ing your worth­less blog.

2. “the jump” — who decided to call it this? It sounds fuck­ing idiotic.

3. This can be done in a much more effec­tive way, and I know it, I’ve seen it in blog soft­ware. You could have a sim­ple “read the full entry” or “read more” or even, god for­bid, “read more after the jump” pro­grammed as the text to the link to the full entry, which would GO AWAY when you get there. The only dif­fer­ence is that you don’t get to cus­tomize it per page. No more “check out more of my stu­pid use­less links to free soft­ware you already know about after the jump” or “see more pic­tures of my stu­pid cat after the jump.” Big fuck­ing loss.

4. One of the advan­tages of a blog/​cms is that your con­tent isn’t nec­es­sar­ily tied to the html — poten­tially, your writ­ing could be for­mat­ted for a new blog­ging sys­tem, or a book, or what­ever the inter­net will become in 30 years. The point is, you’d have to go back in and take that out, because you’re a fuck­ing moron. Look toward the future.

5. I’ve never under­stood why you would want to do this in the first place. What’s so wrong with just hav­ing the full post on the main page? Maybe your stu­pid con­tent aggregator/​evil alien over­lord of a boss forces you to com­ply with some arcane ad place­ment algo­rithm. I don’t care, the point is -

Don’t do it. It’s dumb, and it makes you look dumb.

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