Saturday, June 24, 2006

A Second Chance

Okay, my friend thirdmango has convinced me to give this blogspot thing a second chance. My first post here will be what Novel Concept suggested: a listing of all things that confuse me about this site. If you know of easy ways to reduce the stupidity of the site as a user, let me know.
1) There was no way to title individual posts, and that caused me to highly doubt the usefulness of this site. I mean, without a title, there is no post, in my opinion. However, thirdmango showed me that in the settings, I simply had to set the title option to yes. Well, why in the hell did blogspot assume I wouldn't want a title? The fact that that's the default really upsets me.
2) The fact that each user has more than one blog causes me to question the whole concept of a blog (not that I haven't been questioning that concept since day one...I mean, blogs are really silly things). My idea of a blog is one that ranges in its topics from harpooned seals to interesting spots on the skin, and to give an option to bloggers to make a blog dedicated to just one topic seems to go against what I think blogs should be.
3) This is probably the biggest problem, and if there's a way to fix it, please let me know. I want to be able to see my finished post on the actual page, and read the comments, etc. as if I was not signed in, and just looking at my blog page. However, if I click to look at it, I am then taken to my blog with no link to return to my home editing page area, and have to sign in again from the start page of the site. This is completely annoying. I know, I could open my blog in a separate window, and alternate windows, but that's just not the way I usually work. It seems like it would be very simple for this site to include a link back to the signed in page from the blog page, or give the option of signing in again from that page.
However, overall you're absolutely right. MySpace is much less cool in it's layout, and is much less appealing to a person who wants to read a blog. Who really wants to sign up for myspace with all the hassle it entails just to be able to read a blog. However, I really like the subscription options, and the ability it has to link you to a page dedicated to the person who writes the blog...it's much more personal than blogspot in that way. However, it is clear that MySpace is more about relationships between people, and since I hate that, I really should switch to blogspot. Thus, the second chance.