Blog Design Checklist

When you customize your blog design by tweaking a WordPress theme, Blogger template, or other blogging application template, you are making your blog unique. There are so many things you can do to make your blog design reflect your specific blog topic and personality. Use the Blog Design Checklist below to make sure you've customized all of the elements that you can to make your blog design shine. Keep in mind, depending on your blogging application, you may not be able to modify all of the elements in this list. However, for WordPress.org blog design, all of these elements should apply.

Header, Background and Top Navigation

Your blog's header, background, and top navigation bar are critical elements of your blog design. Make sure the images you use in your blog design header look great and reflect your blog topic. Also, make sure your top navigation bar is well-organized, and the colors, roll-overs, and drop-downs are clear. You might want to include a search box in the header area so it's always available to visitors no matter what page or post they land on. And don't forget your blog's background! Be sure to give it a color or image that matches your overall blog design.

Main Content

The main content area is the part of your blog design where your post and page content are displayed. Modify your heading tag formatting (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6) as well as your paragraph font and size, line height, block quotes, bulleted and numbered lists, and bold, italics, and underline formatting. Also, make sure your link colors (including link rollover and visited links) are formatted the way you want them. Finally, check on image formatting and make sure it's configured the way you like.

Post and Page Elements

Configure how you want information related to post authors, pubication dates, and the MORE tag to look in your blog posts. For example, do you want blog post excerpts to be followed by "Read More" or "Keep Reading"? You need to configure that if you want to change it from the theme's original coding. Also, determine whether you want posts and tags to publish with posts and decide where you want all of this information to appear (for example, before or after each post). Finally, choose how many posts should appear on each page and how they'll be offset from one another. For example, will white space be enough to separate multiple posts on a page or do you need a divider line or graphic element for division?

Comments

Take some time to configure how comments will be published on your blog. Will they be threaded? Will they include gravatars? How will comments be formatted? these are all things you should configure as part of your blog design. Keep in mind, both the form where visitors can submit comments and the actual published comments need to be configured. Make sure your comment form highlights mandatory fields and provides an option to subscribe to comments.

Footer

Be sure to include the usual copyright information and important links such as a link to your contact page, sitemap, and so on in your blog's footer. However, you can also offer extra information in your footer such as RSS feed updates from other blogs you write or links to useful resources. Try to make this space work for you rather than simply using it as a catch-all for legal disclaimers.

Sidebar

When you customize the design of your blog's sidebar, consider the width of the sidebar (or sidebars) as well as the font, style, and colors used in the headings for each section (i.e., widget for WordPress users) of your sidebar. Within your sidebar, you can include any information you want. For example, you might want to include your social media profile links and icons to invite people to follow you across the social web as well as an invitation to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. You might want to include links to your most popular posts, ads, links to your blog archives, and so on. Follow the link for a list of common blog sidebar items.

From http://weblogs.about.com
Blog Design Checklist

Top 5 Blog Design Mistakes

There are many blog design tips you can follow as you set up your own blog, but what are the things you should avoid including in your blog's design?  Read about the top blog design mistakes listed below and be sure to avoid them else you risk ruining your blog's chance at success.

1. Clutter

No one will want to spend time on your blog if it's cluttered with too much information, images, text, and so on.  A visitor to your blog will only spend a few seconds viewing your page in order to make the decision to continue reading or click away.  Make sure it's easy to find your valuable content quickly.  Cluttered sidebars, posts overflowing with links, and so on make it difficult to find the meaningful content amidst the extraneous elements.

2. Hard to View Colors

Avoid using a color palette in your blog design that is not easy on the eyes.  For example, it's more difficult to read white text on a black background on a computer screen than it is to read black text on a white background.  Make sure colors are easy to view, linked-text is easy to distinguish by color from non-linked text, and so on.  Try to view your blog on multiple computer monitors to ensure your color palette is easy to read.

3. Too Many Ads

The easiest way to get people to click away from your blog instantly is by filling your blog with ads.  If your blog is covered in ads with difficult to find or limited real content, then your blog will have little chance to become successful and attract large audiences.

4. Too Much Text

Avoid using long blocks of text that are difficult to read on a computer monitor.  Also, avoid creating pages that are very long and require a great deal of scrolling to reach the end.  Try to use white space and reduce the number of posts that appear on a single page of your blog to approximately five to make your blog more visually appealing.

5. No Contact Information

A blog without contact information or an About page that describes who is writing the blog is like a book without an author.  While it is possible for an anonymously written blog to become successful, it's far more common for successful blogs to be written by an authoritative source.  With that in mind, take the time to create a contact page and an About Me page that describes who you are, why you're writing your blog, and how readers can contact you with questions or for more information.

From http://weblogs.about.com
Top 5 Blog Design Mistakes

10 Essential Blog Design Elements

Most popular blogs have a number of blog design elements in common. Read on to learn about ten of the most important blog design elements your blog must have in order to have a chance at success!

1. Readable Text

Your blog design must be easy to read. That means the fonts you choose should be large enough to be read on high resolution monitors, and they should be simple enough to be legible. In other words, don't choose a highly stylized font. Stick with Georgia or Verdana or another Web-friendly font. Also, make sure the text on your blog is easy to scan quickly. Follow the link to learn more about writing scannable blog posts.

2. Inviting Colors

Don't select colors in your blog design that are blinding or so light that it's difficult for visitors to read the text or even look at your blog for more than a few seconds. The easiest colors for people to read online are light backgrounds (white is best) with dark text and images (such as black, dark blue, dark green, and so on).

3. Easy Navigation

Make it easy for visitors to find your content. Don't hinder their visit by using interstitial ads or splash pages. In other words, don't give them a chance to click away from your blog when they land on it.

4. Short Pages

People don't like to scroll. Keep your blog pages short by configuring your blog settings to show no more than 10 blog posts on each page of your blog (5-7 is best). If your blog posts are long, consider using the HTML more tag to split your post into two parts so only the first part appears on the main page of your blog and the rest is available for viewing when a visitor clicks the provided link (often called a 'jump'). You can learn about the HTML more tag on the Wordpress support site here.

5. Search Function

Make it easy for visitors to find related content, specific content, and archived content on your blog by including a search box in your blog's sidebar or header.

6. Your Bio or Profile

While there are some successful blogs written by anonymous authors, most are written by a person or team who makes it very clear why they are the person or group to write about their blog subjects. Show the world who you are and why you're qualified to write your blog by including a comprehensive biography. The best bloggers build strong relationships with their readers, and your bio is the first place to make yourself seem human and personable. Follow the link for tips on writing your About Me page.

7. Contact Form and Social Links

The best bloggers build relationships with their readers, and part of that is making it easy for your readers to connect with you, share information, and get to know you. Make it easy for them to communicate with you by providing a contact form or a link to email you, so you can talk off of your blog. Furthermore, be sure to include links to your social networking profiles such as your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to continue building relationships off of your blog.

8. Useful Footer

Don't forget your footer when you create your blog. When people can't find what they're looking for on a Web site, they often scroll to the footer to find site-wide links such as a contact link, site map link, and so on. Take some time to include useful links and information in your blog's footer, and make sure the footer appears at the bottom of all of your blog pages.

9. Subscription Links

Don't forget to include a link and button above the fold on your blog for people to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. Subscribers often turn into your most loyal readers. Make it easy for everyone who visits your blog to subscribe. Follow the link to learn more about increasing RSS subscribers.

10. Silence

As tempting as it might be, don't use music on your blog. If you must include music, allow visitors to turn it on at their discretion. Do not have music automatically play when someone visits your blog. While music can enhance a blog, it is more often thought of negatively.

From http://weblogs.about.com
10 Essential Blog Design Elements

10 Easy Ways to Make Your Blog Design Shine

There are a variety of ways to customize your blog so it doesn't look like a standard template. You could hire a blog designer for a complete blog makeover or you can tweak a blog template to make simple but highly effective design changes. Don't worry if you're technically challenged and not comfortable modifying HTML or CSS code. Blog designers offer the simple design changes listed below at much lower individual costs than a completely customized blog design costs. Use a free or premium theme and use the quick blog design tricks below to make your blog stand out from the crowd!

1. Blog Header

Your blog header is displayed at the top of your blog and is the most prominent part of your blog. It instantly communicates what your blog is about, so it should be well-designed. Blog headers can include text, images, or both.

2. Blog Background

The background of a blog displays when the content columns don't fill a visitor's full computer monitor screen. Usually, the background can be seen flanking the theme content columns (the posts column and sidebars). You can choose any color for your blog's background or upload an image for your background.

3. Blog Colors

You can change a variety of blog colors to create a consistent, branded look. For example, choose a color palette of 2-3 colors and change your blog's title text, link text, background, and other elements to use only those colors.

4. Blog Fonts

A blog filled with dozens of different fonts looks sloppy and creates the impression that the blogger doesn't care much about the user experience. Choose two primary fonts for your blog and use those fonts (and bold and italic variations) for your title and body text throughout your blog.

5. Blog Post Dividers

What's in between the blog posts on your blog's home page or archive pages? Is there just a bit of white space? Maybe there is a single black line that stretches across the column? A quick trick to make your blog look better and unique is to use a custom post divider. Post dividers can be customized simply by changing the color of the rule between them or you could insert an image as your post divider.

6. Blog Post Signature

Many bloggers like to sign their posts by inserting a custom signature image. This simple image can add personality and uniqueness to your blog.

7. Blog Favicon

A favicon is the tiny image that appears to the left of a URL in your web browser's navigation toolbar or next to website titles in your browser's bookmarks list. Favicons help to brand your blog and make it seem more credible than blogs that use the generic blank piece of paper favicon.

8. Sidebar Titles

Don't forget to dress up the widget titles in your blog's sidebar. Change the color and font to match the rest of your blog as well as the personality you want to give your blog.

9. Social Media Icons

There are tons of free social media icons available that you can add to your blog (most often in the sidebar) to not only invite your audience to connect with you across the social web, but also to add some personality to your blog. From simple shape icons to fall icons, there are creative icons available to add some pizzazz to your blog.

10. Blog Navigation Menu

Your blog's top navigation menu can be a simple bar with links or it can be a free-flowing group of links that match your blog's header design. The choice is yours, but this type of blog design customization is just one more way to make your blog stand out from the crowd.

From http://weblogs.about.com

10 Easy Ways to Make Your Blog Design Shine