Phone Number | Blog Traffic Exchange

Principles for Good Blog Design, pt 1

June 9th, 2010 — Blog Design, Blog Tips, Blogging

tips Most of the open source blogging platforms out there are going to come with at least a few different basic blogging designs. Some platforms call them themes, others call them templates, and others still have completely unique names for them. Most of these basic themes or templates have nothing inherently wrong with them, but customization is somewhat necessary otherwise everyone would have a blog that looked exactly the same as every other blog. Most blogging templates are really basic, and adding your own flair to them is easy. Still, many people get the whole customization thing wrong, and need to be steered in the right direction. There are some basic mistakes to how people go about customizing their blogs, and hopefully we can dispel some of them in this series on principles for good blog design.

1 – Whether you really want to or not, it is vital that you have some information about *you* in the blog. Either create an about me page, or have some information about yourself displayed in the sidebar of your blog. This should be a prominently placed section so it can be easily found, and it should be truly about who you are, rather than read like a resume.

2 – Make sure that your personal contact information is readily available, and even more importantly, easily visible. You need to at least have an e-mail address visible, and a phone number would be even better. If you want to prevent spammers from harvesting your e-mail address, use an image to display it rather than text. You can always use a free web based e-mail address such as a yahoo, gmail or hotmail address to keep from having your true personal address displayed, if you like. By posting real contact information, you are going to make yourself appear much more real. Although people may not really find reasons to contact you, you’re still indicating to your readers that you are available, which is a good thing.

3 – You should absolutely include a picture of yourself in your blog. All blogs, even business blogs, are personal, and the people who visit yours are going to want to know who you are and what you look like so that they can get to know you, and can benefit from the personal nature of your blog. It is much easier to build trust between yourself and your readers if your picture is visible and your readers feel like they know you. You do not absolutely need a picture, but it is still strongly recommended that you do have one in order to get the most out of your blog.

4 – Some of your blog posts are going to be more popular than others. Once you recognize which blog posts these are, keep them from being buried by finding a way to highlight them.

Continued in part 2 of this series.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2009-02-06 08:15:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Related Posts

Top Blogging Strategies Whether your blog is about general interest topics like how you washed a crayon in your son's pocket and there's a new bank going up in town, or you have a niche blog designed to make money, the same basic blogging strategies apply if you want to be a top......
Installing a WordPress Blog If you want to install WordPress on your own server, the first step is to download the necessary files from the website at WordPress.org download. Next, you will use an FTP program to upload the files to your host site. If you use Cpanel, you can use Fantastico in order......
The Opposite of Successful Blogging There is an opposite to successful blogging, which is blogging that drives your readers in the wrong direction. Take a look at this list of things that you can do to drive readers away so that you will have a better understanding of what you need to do in order......
Design Blog Improvement When it comes to blog improvement, one of the considerations that you might want to make relates to the design of your blog, as changing up the design of your blog can also have an impact of the quality of your blog and the functionality of your blog as well.......
Successfully Using Blog Entry Titles There are a number of different solutions that can be used by successful bloggers in order to bring attention to their posts, simply by using titles effectively. There is no real right or wrong answer when it comes to writing out a good title for your blog, and choosing a......

Related Websites

Small Claims Court: Basic Information Today’s article puts some personal in personal finance. That’s the point, right? The car situation has escalated. After much deliberation we decided to go ahead and file a small claims lawsuit. It’s been such a headache with having one car (we couldn’t share as we work in different cities......
Ten Budget Busters The book A Millionaire's Common Sense Approach to Wealth by Dexter Yager lists ten reasons why people do not make their budget. Here is the list as presented by Yager (with my short summary for each): Photo by striatic A Lack of Training – some people simply don’t know how......
Is Your Blog Compelling Enough? Time and time again, if you are a corporate blogger, you’ve probably heard about the importance of compelling content. What you may not know however is what constitutes this type of content. If you’re not taking the time to craft posts that your readers will find compelling, you may be......
Social Networking for Boomers - take a look! By Jeff Bertolucci Online social networks aren't just for kids. Just ask Malinda Crispin, 66, an American expatriate living near Tours, France. A year ago, she was scouring the Internet to find information on two different topics: traveling in Thailand and plastic surgery. Crispin stumbled upon some relevant discussion groups,......
Why Fear Blogging? Are you afraid of blogging? Many companies and businesses are actually quite afraid of corporate blogging because they are afraid of being different. It's time that we get over our fears, however, because the new way of establishing permanent relationships with people is to ask "Do you have a blog?"......