2006 will be the 5th year that I’ve been designing blogs and I’ve been reflecting on some surrounding issues. Here’s three of them for now.

The sidebar(s)

Standard blog software’s templates are all 2 or 3 columns. Almost all blogs are 2 or 3 columns. As a result, most people want blogs designed with 2 or 3 columns. That’s ok… but what ends up happening often is that the sidebars are just filled up with stuff, just because there’s columns there. Have a good long hard look at many sidebars and ask yourself if it’s necessary to have all that extra complexity and text on the page.

Could pages be created specifically for people wanting that information? e.g. Archives – apart from a page footer to navigate to previous posts. e.g. Blogroll – could this be on its own page along with informative descriptions as to why you like/read those blogs?

Consider creating a fun “About me” page with update information on what you’re listening to, reading, doing… and create a teaser which randomly pulls out an item from this page on the home page.

Don’t clutter your page with too many things other than your main message – your content.

The individual post archive template

So much thought and effort goes into creating a nice design for the home page and usually the individual post archive template is a clone, an afterthought. Remember that for most blogs, a large chunk of traffic is via search engines or link ups where people arrive on an individual post archive, rather than on your home page. Imagine being a visitor to your blog, who’s arrived to an individual post. Is it clear they’ve arrived on a blog? Is it clear who the author is and when it was written?

Blogspeak

While almost everyone knows what a blog is, there’s a tonne of other in-crowd-jargon that bloggers are using constantly and, in many cases, probably unnecessarily. Remember what it was like when you first heard all of these terms… it’s a little overwhelming.

“Syndicate”? That word didn’t mean much to me as a New Zealander. I only knew of it being something to do with TV shows in the US.

“RSS Feed”? “XML”? What about using “Subscribe” or “Be notified of updates”? (And of course, adding the funky new standard Feed icon for those who recognise it.)

“Permalink”? Hardly necessary – just link the title of your post to the permalink. No weird word, same functionality.

“Blogroll”? Try “Blogs I recommend” or just plain old “Links”.
You get the idea. Step back from your blog every so often and try and reduce the jargon for the uninitiated.

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