Definitely agree that this is an issue, it often bugs me ... but the site linked presents the same problem, why can't i click my way to jazzychad.net?

Jazzychad - Fix Your Blog Links ;)

This is true, there's not a direct link from my blog to my homepage... however I think that personal blogs fit it a different category. I'm not trying to sell my readers anything (except opinionated advice!), but the argument could be made that I am selling myself as the product.

At least you can click your way there through the "About" link in the header, albeit that is two clicks.

Edit: Ok, after lots of people calling me out on this, I've added a link to my homepage in the nav section :)

I did notice that after my reply ... still, the main page tells me at least as much about you as your about page, and I often want to find out more about the author of an article I enjoyed, you are indeed the product!

You should link them. People will find them either way.

From article:

"I'm not just picking on Flattr, they are just the last in a long line of blogs that have done this."

i++;

Rather than linking to the homepage, we chose to make sure we linked to our relevant About page. http://blog.tinfoilsecurity.com

The whole navigation when on your blog seems confusing. If you click on the logo while on the blog, you get the blog home, but if you click the about link, you are taken to the main site with similar navigation (and a similar looking logo/layout). You really don't get the feeling that you've left the blog site.

Wouldn't it be simpler and much more straightforward to just add a blog link to both your blog and your main site, make your blog look like your main site and make the logo link to your main site. After all, isn't your blog part of your main site?

Also, when you click on your profile link on the right of your blog you get a posterous profile page. Seems like that should link to the about page as well.

I've updated the blog header a bit to have the logo take you to the home page and have a Blog link just for the blog.

Heh, it's not actually part of the "main site"; we're using Posterous for the blog, but I'm really happy you think it is part of it -- means my CSS hacks have worked. :)

Yes the subdomain is different, but they both share the same domain (that's what I meant by site) and both have to deal with the same thing--your company. Seems like they should as close to one another in look and feel (and navigation) as possible.

Fair. We're working through a redesign, but we'll be sure to take this into account. Thanks for the feedback. :)

I like the overall theme behind your design. Yet the site feels clumsy to navigate. The layout does not seem to follow some sort of grid. The links are far apart. The short about you have to the left of the site describing what you do looks like a wall of text. Dunno. It makes it look amateurish. Something not good when your product is security.

So much, in fact, that when I saw your pricing I had to do a double take. Eight hundred dollars a month for a service when the site looks amateurish?

I don't mean to humiliate you publicly. But you must look into that. It doesnt look right.

Heh, it takes a lot more than that to humiliate me, and we appreciate the feedback. I assure you we aren't amateurs; certainly not in the security space.

We're working on a redesign, but I'm sure if you asked any of our customers about our internal design (which does follow a grid and was sort of a v2 of our external design) they'd say they were pretty happy with it thus far. Doesn't mean it can't improve, of course. Design is incredibly important to us and we're always working on making it better.

But I assure you we're looking into the external design and making it even cleaner than it already is.

I know you guys are not amateurs, and that's why I feel so bad about the whole thing.

I wouldn't call the service expensive or cheap. In security, price is not important. People will pay anything to be and feel secure. But the whole secure thing must start from the image you convey. You must refactor the design. The logo is cute, the colors are nice. But it doesn't affirm what you just told me up there: that you guys are not amateurs.

Shoot me an email (on my profile). I'd like to talk to you about it privately.

That's great, but I would also argue that linking the big "Tinfoil Security" logo to the blog homepage is even more annoying. I feel like I've been tricked since I expected that to go to the homepage.

Hm, that's a fair point. Would it be better to point that logo to our homepage and have a separate Blog link?

Changed as per the feedback; logo now goes to our homepage, and Blog link now goes to our blog.

Yeah, you could add a "Blog" link before the "Pricing" link and aim the logo at your homepage.

I had exactly the same issue with the flattr blog. I tried flattr.net then got to flattr.com but it was a pain and involved me typing in the URL. Bad! Anyway big +1.

This is my biggest pet peeve on the entire internet. It seems no matter how intelligent and creative some people are, they always screw this up.

It's like when someone has bad breath, but online. You really don't want to mention it...

I actually thought the exact same thing when I was browsing the Flattr blog. I spent a good 10 seconds looking for a link to the real site before giving up and manually changing the URL.

I wonder if JazzyChad would have used Flattr's blog as an example, or written this post at all, if Flattr hadn't made it to the front page six hours before this was posted.

I would not have. Their link on HN was the straw that broke my back and finally pushed me to write my post. In fact, I say as much in the post :)

There's a secondary reason for this: SEO. If your blog gets links from other blogs, you'll want that link juice to flow back to your main site for Google rankings.

I thought "YES! Please!" as soon as I saw the post title. It's one of those things that always annoyed me, but not enough to say anything about it.

Thanks for this post. I thought I was the only one getting a little upset about this.