If you’ve got a new blog up, and haven’t edited your About page, please do. I can’t count how many times I’ve discovered a new promising blog, and clicked through to the About page, only to see the heart-sinking text:

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

Think about it: the about page is so important it’s coded into every new WordPress installation- and yet so many of us neglect to edit it.

So what makes a good About page?

• It’s usually where you introduce yourself (or your company)- although you should definitely have a short introductory blurb on your main page anyway.
• It helps to put a photo of yourself up, too- people like to see a real human being is behind a site.
• Contact information is good to have here, even if you have a separate Contact page.
• More “random” personal stuff belongs here too. If you’re the type who likes to answer those “25 things about me” quizzes, go ahead and post it here.

Here are some excellent About pages I’ve found online:

SitePoint’s About Page They’ve really gone all-out here, with statistics, a historical timeline, a newsfeed, and a short list of who’s who.

Twitter’s About Page not only features avatar links to their employees’ twitter accounts, they answer questions such as “Where did the idea for Twitter come from?” and my favorite “Isn’t Twitter just too much information?”.

Jason Kottke calls his The exciting About page– tongue in cheek, yes, but he definitely gets it right. His About page features a reverse chronology of his life, some answers to frequently asked questions, and details on how to best contact him.

Shaun Andrews’ About Page is an example of a simple but still interesting one. A wonderful designer (we interviewed him here at Devlounge a few years ago), he provides a bulleted list with short bits about himself.

Do you read About pages? Are there any About pages you love?