I also like the metaphor of blog as space or house – when it’s working best for me that’s how it feels, and I often catch myself thinking about heading over to someone’s “place” to spend some time. Thinking about that balance between comfort, welcome, lack of clutter and cleanliness is a useful way of thinking about how things look when a new reader first pops their head round the door.

Joanna

I agree about the most popular and tags issue, however, many readers look for those for two reasons. First, they expect them to be there, whether or not they use them. Second, while they might not use them, the words in the most popular and tags provide information about the purpose of the blog, adding to the culmination of “first glance” information to help them make a decision to stay or leave.

Not every blog needs these two, but readers expect them, and this is about what the readers need, not about what the blogger “thinks” they need – a huge gap I’m trying to close.