Comments on: Important Elements of Blog Design & Layout

By: Chasing a Dream » Blog Archive » How to Create a WordPress Theme - Part 2

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 02:36:19 +0000

[...] OK, if you look back at Part 1, you will find I listed choosing a Column Layout first on the To Do list. However, do you always do your To Do’s in order? Not me. Well, actually, it’s not my idea. In researching the whole column/page layout concept for today, it was pointed out there were some other considerations to consider first. In a recent guest post at ProBlogger, Matt Coddington from NetBusinessBlog shares the Important Elements of Blog Design & Layout. [...]

By: Razeen

Razeen — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:30:06 +0000

That is a good article Matt.
Maybe i can give another tips:
1. Add Rss Feed link near your header or it is in your header, so the reader can subscribe it easily.
2. Latest entries or Popular entries post are put in your header.

In my opinion it is good to attract your new visitors.

By: Wordpress Guy

Wordpress Guy — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:50:35 +0000

Hi Matt
Nice article. I’m on a 12″ laptop with a widescreen format at the moment. On this format your site at http://www.netbusinessblog.com/ looks very ad heavy before I start scrolling down. This got me thinking about screen sizes and clickthrough rates. Do you track your visitors by screen size, and if so do you notice users with tiny screens like mine disappearing? On a larger screen the content is much more obvious and compelling at first glance.

By: blooG - Tecnologia e Internet diariamente

blooG - Tecnologia e Internet diariamente — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 16:43:27 +0000

[...] Matt Coddington de NetBusinessBlog publicó en ProBlogger un excelente artículo que incluye estos elementos importantes en el diseño de un blog para que sea exitoso e incluso puedas ganar algun dinero con el. [...]

By: Edrei

Edrei — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:53:18 +0000

Content is definitely King. Thing is, so many people tend to emphasize on design so much that they forget that it’s what people read that makes it good. People tend to want the best looking designs with features that people won’t use.

Worse yet are the people who demand code validation or they’ll write your blog off without even looking at the content. It’s just a bad circle.

The most people that people need to do when designing a layout for their blog is to eat their own dogfood. To ask themselves, what would they want when they visit a site? Would they use what they put on their blog? If not, then it’s probably not needed. But people don’t usually do that and the result is a huge mess of pretty (useless) things.

Things like this are much more obvious on personal blogs where it doesn’t rely on information or up to date news. Without a proper distribution of content, it’s hard for things to work.

By: Joost

Joost — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 01:45:53 +0000

I guess the most important thing when thinking about your design is who your audience is gonna be. If you’re writing a blog about art or design you can’t get away with a design that’s too simple.
We’re all geeks here, we’re looking at the content and functionality and we think ads are evil (how do you guys make your money, by the way….?). I also always have discussions with our designer about the fact that he makes everything too heavy and he uses too many images, but if your audience expects elaborate designs you should give it to them.
Besides this, it also has to do with credibility. If you want to say something about design you’d better be a good designer yourself and you need to show this. And a shoddy website is never something you want to advertise your company with.
(NB: personally I think both Darren’s and Matt’s blog are too busy above the fold, but kudos for the rest)

By: Terry Ng

Terry Ng — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:12:42 +0000

Design should support the content.

By: Indi ProBlogger

Indi ProBlogger — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:37:04 +0000

Hi Matt,

Certainly, content is King. How about the visitor being a Queen.

When both come together, the power of the Queen’s word-of-mouth-publicity brings in the fully loaded Traffic. Boom!

By: Lars-Christian

Lars-Christian — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:36:39 +0000

Very nice guest post Matt, and congrats on landing a spot at Darren’s famous blog, quite a feat!

I agree with a lot of what you say here, especially what you mention about making it easy to contact you. I’ve been trying to get in touch with a few bloggers lately, and I’ve found that many bloggers don’t even have a contact page. It leaves me a bit dumbfounded, because what’s the point of not letting your readers get in touch with you?

By: Harry L

Harry L — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:08:57 +0000

I’ve found that that first impression is very important in looking at a new blog.
If I see some interesting content links right away, I will be inclined to stay a while and “browse”. If I get overwhelmed by ads right away, I may not bother to take a real look around.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:01:51 +0000

Matt, Interesting article; however, I would have been interested to read your thoughts on the must haves.

I recently read an article that quoted many of the conventional things (categories, search box, archives) as must-haves. I disagreed.

Is the lack of a list of must-haves an indication that you think they are not must-haves at all?

By: Ryan J. Parker

Ryan J. Parker — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:55:10 +0000

Matt, you’re everywhere!

By: Barsawda

Barsawda — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:38:09 +0000

You have been a great teacher and advisor. I, way out here in a remote part of Yemen, have – for the past few months – used your tips and it has worked very well for both my blogs The other one is: http://binawadh.blogspot.com/

By: Christa

Christa — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:35:15 +0000

Good job Matt, WoW you have to get up pretty early to be the first commenter!

By: Gdog

Gdog — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:13:29 +0000

Excellent article Matt. Good to see you guest blogging on top blogs once again! Well done.

By: Raghu

Raghu — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:12:34 +0000

Good post Matt.

My articles on blogging at http://www.raghucs.com/category/blogging/

By: Teresa

Teresa — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:10:34 +0000

I feel terrible. In the “make it easier for people to contact you” part, I’ve realized it’s quite easy for people to contact me. Which is great. But- I find it hard to contact them back. On blogspot, I have yet to find the “Reply” button!

By: Mike Panic

Mike Panic — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:04:58 +0000

Again, great article with information that should be common knowledge but isn’t to a lot of bloggers. I see so many 3 and 4 column WP blogs where the content is only 300 pixels wide and the rest is so filled with ads and crap that one can’t find navigation, previous blog posts or content.

Last night I installed the Firefox extension Sage to help better manage my RSS feeds from my Google homepage. In doing so, I had to visit all the blogs I normally read to get the RSS feed again. You have no idea how troubling it can be to not be able to find an RSS feed on a site in the first 5 seconds. For a few of the blogs I had to view the source code just to snag the RSS.

Some bloggers are great graphical designers in addition to their skillful writing, others have no clue about end user experience and just make things look pretty, so they think. If more bloggers put time into making their blog end user friendly, they’d get a lot more readers.

By: OhCash

OhCash — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:55:17 +0000

Absolutely. User experience is a must that many people just forget or overlook. User experience is an important element of regulars along with a possibility of a means to traffic.
Great post!

By: Blain Reinkensmeyer

Blain Reinkensmeyer — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:55:51 +0000

Matt, great guest post man, makes a lot of sense to me. As an advertiser on your blog, it is my duty to support your work, haha. Have a great weekend everyone!