suggestion #2: unblech your blog

2010
05.17

Category: suggestion / Tag: blogs, content, design, font, header, layout, links, navs, user experience, wordpress / Add Comment

I have been looking at a lot of wordpress blogs lately and I’m seeing some rampant design shitstorms. Here are some do’s and don’ts I have hastily put together for your new person blogging educations:

Don’t put your nav on the left side. Users more often than not scan left to right. You want to put the content in front of their faces immediately not throw a mess of links at them.

Do put your navs on the top, right side, bottom or all of the above. Top is good for the main sections of your site, the right side is good for some more specialized links like most recent posts, most recent comments, twitter follow, facebook fan, etc. And the bottom is good for a text version of the main nav.

Don’t have a huge graphical header at the top of your blog that takes up half the screen when users arrive at your site. Why do people need to see that self-indulgent waste of space every time they go to your site? They want content. They don’t want to see your pretty picture.

Do have a minimally-graphic, non-garish font having, easy-to-read, not-too-height-greedy header. The header, ideally, should stand out but not overwhelm. And note that I am not advocating just html system fonting your header. You just gotta find that balance. The header should brand your site but it shouldn’t divert focus from the content of the site.

Don’t have more than two columns. You with your text ads, blogrolls, badges, tag clouds, facebook, twitter, newsletter, rss, affiliates, skyscrapers, translation tools, and on and on. It looks like craigslist up in there with ~~some~~ most people’s blogs. It is distracting.

Do try and stick to two columns. Have your main body with the content and then another column for all your stuffs. Put the things you want people to take action on towards the top (twitter follow, facebook, newsletter, etc) and the farther you go down, the less important things get. Also, try not to make the content in the right-hand nav longer than the content on the page. Always design erring on the side of the full page of content being longer than the nav.

Like everything, there are exceptions to these rules. It’s just a general guideline for those people venturing out into the blogging world to get going in a good less-irritating direction. And by all means, leave some more good do’s and don’ts in the comments.