Blog layouts boring?

February 22, 2006

One of the conversations which has grabbed my interest since returning from holiday tackles blog layouts being boring or inflexible. Michael Parekh wishes that blog software “offered more flexible and alternative ways to present content in different forms within the same blog” and goes on to ask for a blog template with “the ability to have multiple tabbed pages” for different content (rather than setting up a separate blog). He also requests that there’s different ways to present content within those pages, such as without post titles or highlighting feature specific posts. Jeff over at BuzzMachine wishes templates were more flexible.

As many have responded, templates are incredibly flexible and those feature requests are all possible with today’s tools such as Wordpress and MovableType. It is easy enough to set up multiple tabs which will show different types of content (thanks to categorisation) and different templates depending on the category. UX Magazine (created in Textile) is a lovely example which does exactly this. Problogger shows a nice example of a feature post area and tabbed blogs.

Michael’s reply is that he wants more mainstream, less “geeky” solutions that don’t require coding. All the things that we take for granted in blog functionality today arose out of requests like Michael’s - ones which started as geeky hacks/plugins/code and became popular and then were integrated with the core software (or kept as an easy-to-use plugin).

As a blog designer, a big part of my job is either finding or writing plugins to adapt the blogging tools to provide the funtionality you need and want. There’s no need to keep blogs as one long scrolling page of posts if you don’t want them appearing that way.

In the quest to keep blog layouts interesting, there’s room for caution: remember usability. Sometimes I like to scroll down and read a week’s worth of posts and don’t want to have to click through to each post like I have to on the popular and trendy new theme called Squible.

Sometimes, while we find our own layouts and designs worn out and tired looking, we need to remember that they’re still fresh and easy for our visitors to use. While innovation is important, there’s something to be said for a blog acting in a familiar way to new visitors - like a book we can always flick through.

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Comments

  1. [...] This started out as a simple comment on Rachel’s design blog, but started getting wordy, so I converted it to a post w/trackback. (Which may be a thought for a future post, what is too long of a comment?) The part I found myself relating to was the design of Squible, and user experience, which I found myself having recently gone through. I had gotten busy, neglected my blogging, and when I got back into the swing of things,felt a new look was in order. Not having that much time, I opted for Squible. A good friend who also blogs noted that he “just couldn’t get his head around that format”. I fought changing things back for some time, but that comment hung around in the back of my head. I kept thinking that this guy is a “web guy, a designer. If he can’t get around it, what about the other 150+ a day that stumble upon place.” So when I changed hosts, and upgraded, I tried Squible for all of about 20 minutes, and then cobbled together a more traditional blog design. Not that as a fledgling, wanna-be designer I don’t want to push my envelope, but I have to come back to the user experience. Much as my cooking evolved from wanting to be “everychef”, that is, I wanted to be Charlie Trotter, Jean Louis Paladin, Alan Susser, and Jean Georges Vongrichten on every plate. Little by little, I learned that my guests weren’t looking for me to defy gravity and mix flavors that might not otherwise be mixed, simply for the sake of “pushing the envelope”. It took me a long time to understand that my guests wanted a good meal. Sure, an unexpected flavor that contrasts but doesn’t detract, or a creative yet accessible presentation is fine, but make it edible. But I digress. I still want to push envelopes, and broaden horizons, and all those clichés, but first and formost, I want the ramblings, and info to be accessible, and to flow in some manner that people will “get”. Tags: blog design, cooking [...]

    — Miklb’s Mindless Ramblings » Blog Designs, Function or Form?, February 23, 2006

  2. if michael’s feeling is that the current blogging software still requires a geek know-how, he’s lucky to that he wasn’t blogging three to four years ago. the current blog software features allow almost anyone with reading skills to get a decent looking page up.

    the blog layouts of today are not boring. true, a good majority of blogs maintain the standard two and three column layouts, but an increasing number are offering layouts which provide more content in less space by using previous posts and comments plugins. i’m still working on mine but i hope to get something refreshing up and running.

    — derek, February 23, 2006

  3. [...] I’ve been thinking more about blog layouts and whether or not new layouts improve things for readers. [...]

    — On blog layouts and tags as filters — cre8d design blog, February 24, 2006

  4. Perhaps Squible is more directed to people like me who dont want to look like the others in the block. But if we all use the theme witout any customisation, the problem remains.

    — Mário, February 28, 2006

  5. mario is right
    its smt. for people like us who need to standout
    but one need to customize it(am yet to do that step though :)

    — anusharaji, March 10, 2006

  6. btw y is it showin 5 comments when there are 3?

    — anusharaji, March 10, 2006

  7. It’s counting the trackbacks where people are also commenting on this post.

    — Rachel, March 11, 2006

  8. [...] Blog design still matters. I’m going to redo this blog using WordPress once I’m settled in Denver and have regular childcare. My favorite thinker in the web design space is Rachel Cunliffe of cre8d design. She recently wrote two articles that I’d like to come back to as inspiration for my next blog design: Blog layouts boring? and On blog layouts and tags as filters. I love the spring colors on her blog—it cheers me up every time I browse there. Blog layout and design will not go away just because feeds are available. Sometimes I’m reading articles in my feed reader and I forget who the author is for a second. It’s disconcerting. The BlogHer web feeds don’t even say who the author of each post is! Though I do most of my feed reading through a news reader, I’ll never give up reading my favorite blogs and memetrackers like Memeorandum on the sites directly. By the way, nice new design, Gabe. [...]

    — Anne 2.0 » Gone to the Beach, May 14, 2006