16 Jan 07 Blog Design Issues

Attention, all bloggers!  I must take task with a handful of design issues in many of the templates you use.  So please take a look at the following issues and see if any exist on your blogs.  If so, please correct them immediately.

1. Header Links – I’ve noticed that quite a few people neglect to include links back to their main page in their site headers.  Ideally, readers should be able to click on the site header at any time and be returned back to the main page.  Sadly, this is often not the case.  It’s not that big of a deal when readers arrive at your blog by way of the main page.  They can click down to an individual entry to read or leave comments then simply click ‘Back’ in their browser to return to the main page.  But what about those folks who arrive at your blog by way of individual entries?  They read, they leave a comment, then they want to browse the rest of your site.  In the absence of a header link, the only way to get back to the main page is by modifying your site’s URL and truncating down to just the main address.  It’s inconvenient, to say the least.  Correcting this problem is easy enough – simply modify your header.php file and encapsulate your site’s title in a link tag.  An additional option (notice I did not say alternative) is to add a small navigation bar into your sidebar that includes a ‘Home’ link to your front page.  This makes it very easy for readers to get back to the front page at any time in their browsing experience, making their stay on your site much more enjoyable.
2. Sidebar Content – I’ve been to some sites where the sidebar is longer than the front page of the blog itself due to the vast amounts of clutter.  In my opinion, a good rule of thumb to follow is this – keep sidebar content to a minimum.  I realize that many folks have become emotionally attached to the use of chiclets and graphics, but the fact of the matter is that most sidebar graphics are not necessary and even detract from the overall look and functionality of your blog.  I’ve been to some sites where I actually had trouble finding the navigational links because they were so buried inside graphics and images.  Lose the chiclets, folks; if necessary, create a separate page just for them and use that page to advertise all your favorite sites.  Ideally, the only things that should be in your sidebars are your site navigation links, archives, searchbar, and categories, blogroll (with a limit being placed on the number of these, as well; some folks seem to think that half a dozen blogrolls aren’t even quite enough), metadata, a link to your RSS feed (if you have one), and maybe room for one or two small flourishes (I have two sideblog categories I use for one-line entries).  Essentially, your sidebar content should be reserved for those things that will help your readers find their way around your site more effectively.  Everything else should be put into blog entries or separate pages.  Tidy things up a little bit, and make your blog easier on the eyes (and the nerves).
3. Old Comments – Some people like to turn off comments on entries that are older than a certain number of days.  The reason they do this is because comment spammers like to target those entries with Internet graffiti.  But for legitimate readers who stumble across those entries and want to add to discussion by leaving a comment, it’s very frustrating when they can’t.  Most blogging platforms nowadays have some pretty good methods of blocking comment spam while still leaving all entries open for public discussion.  Akismet has plugins for a wide variety of blogging platforms as well as a couple of discussion forums and photo galleries.  Blogger uses image verification (a less than ideal remedy that nonetheless does the job).  Whatever platform you use, I suggest you take the time to research an effective solution for comment spam and turn those comments back on.  Your readers will thank you.
4. Next/Previous – It’s a standard practice for new readers to a blog to read down through all the entries on the front page before proceeding to the second.  Imagine how annoying it is when they get to the bottom of the page only to find that the ‘Next’ link is missing for the second page.  For most blog owners who do this, they reason that readers can simply click through to their archives by using the links in their sidebar.  That’s one solution, but it’s not very practical.  It involves readers having to scroll back up to the top of the page, since the last entry on the page tends to be located a fair distance below the archives links.  It is much simpler and less hassle to let readers simply click on ‘Next’ to continue reading.  Most visitors to your blog probably won’t ever read anything older on such sites, no matter how interesting the content is to them.

Ultimately, the point of having a well-designed template is to dress your writing up a little bit and, more importantly, make it as easy as possible for your readers to gain access to all your writings. 

So, go take another look at your template.  If it has any of the issues mentioned above, consider fixing them or switching to a template that has a more solid design.

Tags: blog-design, blogging, Design

30 Nov 05 Blogger Design Tips

Over the last few years, I’ve surfed a lot of weblogs, and I’ve discovered that there are well-designed blogs aplenty and poorly designed blogs even more aplenty.  The good ones make me smile and inspire to hack my own code to create something just as nice.  The bad ones, though, send me racing for that little ‘X’ in the upper right corner (or to center-click that tab) in order to close the window because I’m permanently scarred.  So, out of the generosity of my heart, I offer a bit of advice derived from hard experience.

1. Create a color scheme that is easy on the eyes. I can’t tell you the number of times I have surfed into a site and nearly been blinded by the horrendous soup of ghastly colors.  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that the designer was completely color blind.  Unfortunately, it couldn’t have been that simple, and it merely boiled down to bad fashion sense.  If nothing else run a Google search.  There are lots of color scheme generators out there that will quickly set you up with colors that look good together.
2. Theme should suggest content. Along the same lines as point one, it generally looks better if the visual theme of the site matches the content.  It doesn’t necessarily have to, mind you, since there is a bit more room here for artistic license.  But some of the best sites use graphics and patterns that reflect the overal textual theme of the site.
3. Lose the background music. I know it’s cool and fashionable to load a sound file, especially an mp3, into the background of your site.  Weblogs are notoriously guilty of this sort of thing.  There are several problems with doing this.  One is that many people listen to music on their computer as they surf, so when a site loads that launches its own music, the clash is nothing short of teeth-grinding.  A lot of sites also hide any possibly way of turning said music off, so it’s left to either turn off your own music as you read and deal with whatever tune the site owner has loaded, turn off the speakers so you can’t listen to either one, grit your teeth and deal with the clash until you’re done reading, or kill the browser and end the music abruptly without ever being able to read.  (I usually tend toward the latter.) One final problem is that a lot of sites somehow manage to use up a lot of computer resources when loading the background music, sending the computer into electronic convulsions until the file is completely loaded and running.  Ultimately, background music ends up being more headache than help, even though it lends that personal touch to the site. 
4. If you have trackback, use ‘em. I’m only just recently discovering a love for the power of trackbacking.  Essentially, what trackbacking does is contacts a post on someone else’s blog that you might happen to be writing about and tries to leave a copy of your post as a comment on that post, thus notifying the site owner that you’ve written about their thoughts and adding your thoughts to the ongoing discussion on that site.  It sort of helps aggregate discussion between many sites.  So far, I’ve not written much that has been inspired by another site, but the couple of times in which I have, the trackback has ultimately failed because the feature has been disabled on the target site.  It’s really a personal choice whether to enable it or not; there are some spamming issues concerned with trackbacking.  But since I love discussion, I have it fully enabled on my site and welcome the feedback.  I highly recommend that anyone with trackback functionality enable it, and let the discussion ensue!
5. Keep the ranting to a minimum. I’ve seen a lot of blogs established with one purpose—to rant and rave against a person, a company or product, or another site.  Ultimately, such blogs are less than enjoyable to read and a waste of everyone’s time and energy.  They generally serve no purpose other than to tear down someone else, and the writing becomes very redundant.  Ranting occasionally about a particular issue of interest is fine, so long as their is a point to it and the ultimate goal is to find a solution.  But aimless ranting because of anger is pointless.  So don’t do it.

Just a few tips for those of you serious about your blogging from one man’s perspective.  Everyone’s ideal is going to be different, but these are just some things I have discovered about my preferences for blogging.

Tags: blog-design, Design, site-design, trackback