Overview

I often read a lot of the articles from sites like Hacker News, Lobste.rs, dev.to, some tech-related subreddits and a few others which I come across as a part of browsing the web. I love reading about what amazing things other people are doing, about how they are pushing the limits of what is possible, and how they solve their problems. As an aspiring engineer, I feel fascinated by technical writeups. Whenever I come across new blogs which I find interesting they often end up in my bookmarks. I have a few criteria which I use to decide if your site is worth bookmarking and revisiting.

The Criteria

1. Content

Write something interesting, could be anything but share the technical details and don’t just write a PR nonsense. If I find too much PR nonsense on the site, it is very likely to be thrown away no matter how good the rest of the content is!

Also I like reading about emerging technologies, but if you are riding the hype train, I am not interested. I want to read about the real problems you faced and how you solved them, not about how you are using the latest and greatest tech which nobody else is. Show me how you built it, not how you’re using it.

2. RSS Feed

If you want me to come back to your site, have an RSS feed. I am not going to open up your site to find if there is something you. I let my RSS client take care of stuff I have read and left unread. If you don’t have an RSS feed, I am very likely not coming to your site unless it makes it to the top of Hacker News or any of the subreddits I follow (again using RSS). Also RSS feeds in my experience has also helped me filter out SEO crap, most sites that do have RSS feeds are either having it since a long time and are not just trying to game the SEO, or from hackers who love the simplicity of RSS. Your RSS doesn’t need to be complete, just the title and description is enough and I will open your blogs/writeups if I find them interesting enough.

3. JavaScript, no thanks! I use NoScript

Your site should be completely usable without JavaScript. No site content should be unavailable without JavaScript. I use NoScript and I am not going to enable JavaScript just to read your blog. If your site is not usable without JavaScript, I am not coming back in any way. I use NoScript as a security measure, and I am no way going to disable it anyway. If you are using third-party analytics service like Google Analytics or any other, your site is definitely going to be ranked down by me, but I may still visit it if the content is good enough.

I don’t want to visit sites like Twitter which are basically a walled garden now. If you discuss a lot about sites which don’t allow me to view content without me providing my personal details like email and phone number, then I will not be coming back to your site. I absolutely hate sites which don’t allow viewing their content anonymously and without loading a ton of JavaScript. If you are discussing about a tweet, please add a screenshot of it in your writeup as Nitter is dead now. (RIP Nitter)

5. No Captcha just to read your mostly static site

Your site should be completely usable without any captchas. I am totally find to use them to limit spam for comments, but having to solve a captcha just to read your site is a big no for me. Captchas are really inaccessible and a lot of people with special needs can’t solve them. This is the exact reason why I stopped reading phoronix.com, it requires me to solve a captcha. Although the site then loads without JavaScript, it sets a cookie in my browser which I am not comfortable with.

Thanks for reading my blog. By the way, my site supports RSS and should work perfectly fine without JavaScript (it is only needed for syntax highlighting in codeblocks), has no analytics (I have no idea how many visitors are there), and has no captchas.