How to Design your blog::: jahid-tips.blogspot:::: "
How to Design your blog::: jahid-tips.blogspot:::
- Get a custom design. I know, it can be expensive, but it is worth it. A custom design stands out and allows you to move out of the circle of bloggers who use a template that anyone else can use, too. That's not to say their blogs aren't worth reading, but I've always found a custom design to be much more appealing.
- Clear your clutter. Too many blogs have every widget under the sun. It's messy, it slows down your blog, and a lot of them don't really add value for your readers. Ditch the sidebar junk and make your blog cleaner. Empty space isn't a bad thing!
- Keep your sidebar tidy. Chances are, you'll probably have a few widgets that you can't do without. (This doesn't mean it's always OK to add 'just one more' if you already have 20.) Those that you do have should be organised in a way that makes them look fairly neat. They don't have to be tightly packed nor do you have to lump them all in one large area, but they should look coordinated - and like you didn't just throw them on the page without any thought. If everything has its place, you may be able to justify slightly more widgets than if everything is in a mess.
- Test your site in different browsers. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome, Safari - five major browsers that it's worth testing your site in. Try viewing your site on a mobile phone if you can. And don't forget to view your site on older browsers, too - so not just the latest version of each browser. There are tools to help you with this if you search around (try searching for IETester or BrowserShots). It's better to find the issues before your visitors do.
- Always have a spare, clean browser for testing purposes. Your main browser is probably full of history - cookies and the like. This means you may not notice if a popup ad creeps onto your blog unexpectedly. Or, you might have a few tabs open and think it's from another site. Plus, some of these popups are stealthy - once they've shown, they will remember not to pop up on your next visit (unless you don't come back for a few days or weeks). Don't just test for design issues in other browsers - also test what your site looks like for a first-time visitor who has none of your cookies loaded into their browser, and who isn't logged in.
- Improve your load time. This isn't just to do with clutter looking a bit messy. Does your blog have dozens of images and scripts loading on every page? Keep an eye on how long they take to load, and consider removing things that load incredibly slowly all the time. Pingdom Tools is an excellent place to test how fast (or how slow) your site loads.
- Don't display too much on your home page. Show too much and it'll overwhelm your readers. Consider limiting the number of posts on your home page - you don't have to show everything at once. And you shouldn't try to if you have more than a handful of posts.
- Get a second opinion. You may love the way your blog looks, but others may disagree. This doesn't mean you should change your design completely if one person complains, but if the majority of your readers find it hard on the eyes, you may want to have a rethink.
- Optimise your images. Instead of uploading a full-size image and resizing it in the post editor, use an image editor to save the image at a respectable size before uploading it. Anything larger than 100KB is probably too big - and even that's pushing it. 50KB or less is better, but that may be difficult to achieve for some high-quality images. Also, don't use BMP on the web - stick to PNG, JPG and GIF.
- Important information should not be animated. In general, animation should be avoided or at least used very sparingly. If I can't keep up with your scrolling banners and have to wait for them to come round again so I can finish reading, that's not a good thing.
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