WWMD: 4 Ways to A Unique Blog Design
- Filed under: WWMD
How do you separate your blog from the rest of the pack? Writing style, voice, and blog topics make you different, but those factors don’t matter to first time visitors. To them, yours is like every other blog.
So, how you do separate yourself from the pack? This fifth post, of a series called Wpdesigner Weekend Must Do (WWMD), will help you rise above the rest to make a more memorable first impression.
No Feedburner Chicklet - The Feedburner Chicklet, used to display your number of blog subscribers, is useful for attracting more readers, but browse enough blogs and you’ll begin to see why you really should remove it. Instead of an ugly little button to display your number of subscribers, opt for a text-based display of that number or completely do away with displaying your subscribers count. Try harder, don’t just slap a Feedburner Chicklet on your blog.
No Right Sidebars - I should practice what I preach, but I’m perfectly fine with my own right sidebar at this moment. But for you, if you have a small sidebar, consider moving it to the left. Someone should really run a test to find out the average number of blogs that use right sidebars.
Fluid / Elastic Width - Currently, only the unusually diligent developers have the patience to create a fluid or elastic design for their blogs - designs that fit in any resolution. Typically, if you take this route, you will instantly improve your readers’ browsing experience.
Irregular Advertisement Formats - Just because they’re advertisments, it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with them. Don’t go for the boring 125×125 button banners like everyone else is doing. Using irregular ads sizes or formats will help you look unique. It’ll also help your sponsors get more clicks because irregular formats tend to yield better results.
Now you’re armed with four new ideas. Have fun tweaking your blog this weekend.
I am really with you on the fluid width point.
It is one thing having a central layout that will fit a low resolution, but then be central on a higher res, but to actually make your design so that it fits perfectly whatever screen size you’re on is quite something.
It also doesn’t make the blog look like it wasn’t designed for you, and having a page display well in your browser, as you say, is certainly an attractive quality of a site for making readers stay.
Although I’ve never been a fan of fluid width layouts, we noticed that when we produced a fluid width version of a theme, that was usually the most downloaded option. I’m totally not even going to drop a link or plug Shifter, but that was one of the ideas behind that project - to create the ability create a fluid layout with the flip of a switch.
Nice ideas and some good points! The only problem with fluid-width themes, is that when someone has a large screen resolution, the lines of text in the body become ridiculously long and that makes them difficult to read. Blogs are designed to be read, and thus we should make it easier, not harder for people to read it. According to many studies, the optimal line length is 15-20 words per line. You would never see a newspaper with super-long lines, because it just makes for poor readability, and we should keep that in mind with the blog as well. I think fluid width is a nice idea, but there should be a max-width set (though this doesn’t work in IE6, but then again, anyone still using IE6 is probably not browsing at a high resolution anyway).
Honestly, I prefer the fixed widths, but prefer them to be set for something bigger than 800×600, because most readers are using at least 1024×768, if not larger.
On the Fluid width issue guys, it is possible to set a maximum width using CSS so that the layout stretches between a minimum and maximum. Fluid widths are a little more difficult to pull of but I think they solve many problems.
The right sidebar becomes an issue when your navigation is all stuck there. Usually people would need to find navigation close enough to the top left as that’s where they start reading the page. If I view this site for example in a very small browser window your right column could get cut off a bit.
Have you made Fluid width themes before SP?
My blog, for instance, is using fixed with and I really think that this is the way to go. The reading is way easier, due to the small number of words per line. This fluid thing doesn’t attract me, not at all.
Why no right sidebar, SP? A left sidebar looks weird because a person reads from left to right and what he’ll see first is the sidebar.
nice posting. btw, i translate u posting about making wp-theme in to indonesian in my blog. are u permit? great thanks
Nice ideas to test dear Potato.
Keep the good work.
I don’t like very much the fluid designs….but I will test some solutions.
@Connie - Left sidebars are for important navigation. Right sidebar navigation usually means it’s secondary content or isn’t important at all.
@phil - Like Nomad-Nur said, you can set a max-width for the main content column so it doesn’t stretch across the entire screen.
@Nomad - Yep, I tried one before, but it was sloppy. As resolutions get larger and larger, sooner or later, I have to look more into fluid and especially elastic designs.
@wirawiri - You can translate the tutorial series if you link back to this blog. Please get my permission before translating any other writings from this blog. Thanks
I disagree on the right sidebar. A couple of key reasons:
1. It favors the reader by giving them what they want up front and
2. If favors mobile readers. All my design efforts now focus on ensuring my blog is readable in mobile format quickly and easily and that means content first.
What helps too is a design that can be enlarged without breaking badly. Go to a number of sites and hit ctrl++ [firefox] a few times and watch text jump outside tabs, columns and other fixed areas.
Daniel - That’s what fluid/elastic designs does for you.
Ole - Having a left sidebar doesn’t mean you have to structure it that way across all platforms. Mobile compatible sites or designs usually have their unique stylesheets. Within that stylesheet, you can move the left sidebar to the right for mobile users.
thanks. i’ll link back your blog in my posting. i do apology for my miss before. thanks
I’m with Randy. I hate fluid width sites. My monitor is huge and when I open a fluid width site, it’s just plain ugly - and impossible to read because the columns are too wide, or lately, the font is too big.
My guess why Fluid width is more downloaded than the others is that it is like centred text all caps - it’s what beginners like.
Irene - Fluid width is a good thing when it’s done right.
Well then I’ve never seen it done right
Show me one so I can experience the goodness.
Check this gallery for liquid-width sites.
I honestly don’t agree with either the left sidebar and the irregular ad formats.
1) Right sidebars are common, and we like the main content on our left. If you have two page on a table, you’ll ALWAYS look at the left one first.
2) If you have ad formats no one else supports, advertisers are not going to bother hiring someone to modify their existing ads, as there are hundreds of sites they can advertise on themselves.
Yes, your examples do make your blog unique, but that’s not always something you want.
- Sahil
And just in case you thought I was trying to hide my site, it’s now listed on my name.
(one of them at least)
That’s why, in my previous comments, I explained that left sidebars are meant for displaying important navigations. For example, you have a main menu and sub areas of your site that you want to focus the attention on. If you move those sub areas navigation to the right (within a right sidebar), they become less important.
As for irregular ad formats, advertisers care about the quality of the traffic and irregular ads yield better results anyway. Why would they not want irregular ad sizes? If you’re nice enough to modify the ads for them to make it one step easier, I’m sure advertisers would have no problem with that.
I understand my tips are debatable and I appreciate your opinion. However, if done right, you can follow any of the above tips to make your blog unique without losing usability.
Definitely. I agree with a left sidebar for important navigation, though obviously the top is the best, it’s just that you said “NO right sidebars” which is what I disagreed with.
I love how CSS Liquid isn’t fluid width. And yeah, I prefer fixed width most of the time, because all sites look better at one width.
But that’s just me. They’re both 100% ok in my books, I’ve used them both tens of times.
- Sahil.
Re: the gallery. Is there a particular design that accomplishes what fluid width is supposed to without sacrificing readability?
The ones i looked at are still too wide for me. I have to move my head to take the whole site in, and that’s what I dislike. Plus proportions get out of whack, so they just look odd.
This was the nicest one I saw so far - the columns don’t stretch too much beyond readability. But it still has lots of background space around it, and doesn’t stretch as much,so might as well have been a fixed width design.
http://tmbw.net/wiki/Main_Page
My sidebars ALWAYS start off on the left, but end up on the right, lol!
If there’s just one sidebar, I prefer it to be on the right. Otherwise you have to zigzag back and forth across the screen (between the scroll bar and the navigation).
On the other hand, I am in complete agreement with the liquid layout. I guess I must be unusually diligent, because my blog has one.
I did not go through your comments; you might have already addressed it, but just to add my 2 cents-
I understand that a sidebar with only your navigation best fits to the left (although it’s a myth that it provided good SEO), but it’s really not the ideal location for all sidebars. Although we can control how a page loads (header > index > sidebar > footer), it comes in the way of the main presentation when sidebars are (visually) offered before your content (most read from left to right).
On the fluid-fixed aspect, if your design can cater to the lowest browser resolution (say 800px wide), then it does not matter if it was fixed. Do you agree?
@hso - nowadays, i think high resolutions, rather than low resolutions, is the problem.
imagine a 750px wide layout on a 30″ LCD
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Agree with all of them except probably the fluid/ elastic argumenet! I think its more personal preference and I dont see why any layout is better than the other..
I understand the “No Right Sidebars” point, however, I always try to use one. So far i have no complaints on my own site or any of my client sites. In fact I am amazed at how many people ask for the sidebar on the right.