Blog Designing – What To Add And What Not… Absolutely A Headche!
Designing a blog is NEVER an easy job to do. It gets worse when someone so particular like me is involved in the process and become so fussy even on the slight detail. It took me almost a year to be 90% satisfied with my blog apperance, browsing hundreds of wordpress themes and testing more than 20 themes before I managed to reach that level of satisfaction. It’s absolutely a headache.
Several things come to mind when designing a blog. What to add and what not to add to the designer’s mind as he/she is weighing the options on which plugin to use or which widget to add. What is the colour scheme to use? What fonts to choose? And how many affiliate links (if any) to put.
Themes
Choosing a theme is not as simple as it seems. One must decide whether to use one or two or three columns for his/her blog depending on his/her needs. Blogger that promote affiliate products normally will prefer to have more than one column, preferbly three – to have more spaces for the ads. Those with little knowledge of css will prefer to use themes that are ready-to-use or requires minimum editing while those with photoshop skills will try out as much as possible to make use of the skills by editing the header, banners, etc. As for background, I will prefer to use plain white background with black Tahoma or Verdana fonts as it will be easier for my readers to read the content.
The Plugins
Plugins are normally installed to make life easier for the blogger to run his blog. Choosing the right plugins for your blog will reduce your headche and problems while maintaining your blog. There are plenty of plugins to use with functions such SEO, Admins, Spam Controls and Money Making plugins. Most blogger will install at least one from every type of function and certain plugin such as Aksimet, All-In-One-SEO, Subscribe To Comments and Deal Dot Com pluging are very popular and widely used among bloggers.
The Widget and The Ads
Widgets and Ads are the most common tools used by blogger to enhance and monetizing their blog. Careful selection will make the blog look better and profitable to the owner. Nevertheless, do not be too anxious putting up too many widgets and ands to your blog. They can slow down your blog and prevent visitors from viewing your blog. It can also turn your blog into an ugly one if not carefully selected. Use plugings when installing your ads. There are many plugings that can help arrange your ads and make it more presentable.
There are several other things that you might need to consider as well but you may find sorting out the three above will help you get better result for your blog. There are no easy ways to create a cool, nice looking blog and there ain’t no pills to cure the headache as well. Plan what you want to do, picture it in your mind and slowly begin on your project. You might enjoy it too.
- Passionate About Blogging
Salam Ismail,
Saya lebih suka menatap blog yang simple dan tidak berserabut dengan widget yang pelbagai. Focus saya yang utama ialah entrinya.
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Tie pun setuju dengan Tirana. Lagi pun, kalau banyak sangat widget, susah nak loading. Jadi malas nak baca.
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Salam Ismail,
Saya juga lebih suka dgn blog yang simple dgn content yang menarik.
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Ibarat ‘make up’, jika terlalu byk, nampak teruk juga kan?
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Most of the bloggers spend lot of time on designing the Blog _ finally we are satisfied with nothing!
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Hi Ismail,
I noticed that you have been constantly improving your blog’s design. Although not simple but it’s nice looking, easy to access and informative. Very good work, congrats!
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Thank you for your comment Uday.
Harry – Thank you for your kind words – what I did are more of personal satisfaction. I really love doing designing works though I know that I’m not as good as many others.
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Oh, I refuse to change my blog design. Maybe if I can figure out how to do it by myself. lols. Blogging I thought was simple. But it has lots of activities related to it. Not just writing itself.
As to the plugins and widgets I have no problem choosing which ones to put in my blog. The hard part is how. Some are rather simple. You just need to activate them after downloading. But others ask you to copy and paste some code into the underbelly of the blog. That’s the time I balk and deactivate the plugin.
You can say I’m useless in that part of blogging. What can I say – I fear my blog will be sucked in a proverbial black hole if I foul up with my copy and paste mode. Ahahaha.
I miss reading here. I hope you can forgive an old friend.
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nk buat header je pon ct dh sakit kepala
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Hi Ismail! You got a catchy-looking site, vibrant header and complimentary colours overall…lovely!
Would appreciate a blogging tip on widgets from you. I’m quite familiar with Blogger and their tools but not with my garden blog: http://www.jaycjayc.com/ that uses WordPress 2.8.4 which was technically set up by my elder son since 2006. I’d like to more skillful in using WordPress on my own instead of depending on my boy who has his own heavy workload. So, tried navigating around my site admin and found that it has a widget section like Blogger’s page elements, but when I tried to add the Tag Cloud widget, other sections of my sidebar disappears. Can you please advise! Also, is there any WordPress site that I can approach for guidance. Would really appreciate any help you can share. Thanks.
Happy though that I managed to add the Blotanical logo in today via Edit Theme Files.
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Ismail N Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Hi Jac, Thank You for the Compliment! I’m truly honoured.
Wordpress and blogger actually are quite similar. So, I think you will eventually get hang on it once you fimilar with wordpress. Your other section on the widget bar does not dissapeared. My guess is you never edit the widget section before, so it using the theme’s default setting. For more information on how to use wordpress, I recommends that you download wordpress e-book by Caroline Middlebrook – http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/ . It’s FREE and easy to understand. Thanks for leaving a comment on this blog It was great to hear from you! Please come back to visit again soon!
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hei, saya dari indonesia.. wah, kita tetangga ya.. ^^
hmm, susah memang untuk membuat blog simple tapi menarik.. tapi, comment-comment di atas sedikit membantu.. terima kasih..
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