I personally prefer 2 column layouts for traditional blog content for its uncluttered look and feel. I believe its why themes like Kubrick are so popular, they’re so easy to read the content.

However, like Darren I can find them limiting when placing content. People have a lot to read these days and scan so much that if the start of the headings, images and content don’t draw attention, people will go elsewhere. For me that says making important areas of your site eye catching in some way to draw the viewer into the content is vital. From that eyetrack study that means the first 4 words on a line or an image in a column. Using headings, coloured areas, or images, like Darrens face there draws you into reading that content column too.

How many columns you use I think depends on the content important to your site and just as importantly is using techniques to draw the user into it. 3 columns does make that harder in that it can feel cluttered and if you are still having to design for 800×600 it can be one hard task. Personally of the 3 column layouts I’ve tried, ones that look like 2 column layouts feel least cluttered. By “look like 2 columns”, I mean the side columns situated on one side of a page (preferably right) and are situated close to each other while the content to the left has nice whitespace either side and nice clear line-height for easy reading. I also find that if your posts include images aligned right, or your second column isn’t filled out with information leaving little white space, then a page is better weighted with a narrow second column and wider third. For me placing ads in the 2nd column and nice content in the third makes the user brower over ads, therefore potentially exposing them more rather than just being in the right column where they always typically are and where no one really looks much.

I like this 3 column layout becuase it can allow you to place ads in areas users look to first. underneath a left aligned header and above a post, embedded in a post, below it, and to the right of it just like a 2 column. As well you can embed them into the eye attracting right content like adlinks near a face. It gives you a lot of options in my view. Also, with right aligned images in the left content a user will tend to hover there according to that eyetracker and if your ads are next to it they’re likely to get better exposure.

Just some thoughts…

A couple of days ago I wrote about Darren’s post at ProBlogger asking for folk’s opinions on whether they prefer 2 or 3 column layouts. There was a nice [...]

Thanks for bringing this up Darren.

One, two, three, and four column designs all have their place. Which is best depends on the purpose and goal of the site! I guarantee that I can design you a three column site that does not look busy or heavy. By contrast I could design a very busy one column layout.

Each site has a different goal. A site with short bits of information can get away with a narrower main column. A site with mostly longer posts would probably be more suited to a double column setup. That being said, I’m currently exploring a narrow single column site at http://www.dadlog.com (note that it’s not working in ie, and will go through a couple more changes before its done).

I’m also working on a couple of sites that feature varying columns: at the top, they’re single column to feature the lead article, and below the fold they are either two or three columns.

There is no “one is better that the other” rule. It always, ALWAYS depends on the content.

However, I think most of the comments miss the point. It has nothing to do with personal preference. It is all to do with the USER. There is a lot of research on human-computer interface and would like to see some proper acadmic/business research on blog layout (which will differ from the findings for an ordinary website). I suspect the answer is that one, two or three columns are all appropriate depending on the purpose of the blog and your audience.

As with most things connected to pro-blogging you have to compromise between the “ideal” and the hard reality of how to actually earn money from the blog.

That said I am looking at some of my blogs and considering reducing them to a two column layout on the archive pages while still having the three column on the index page. That would actually invole removing not the advertising from the archive pages, but most of the extraneous navigation links.