Welcome to the part 4!

Again, this post have a very tight relation with the previous parts. Make sure to read them before going here:

Discovering the True Wealth in Blogging:

• Part 1 - About Personal Growth
• Part 2 - About Friends and Community
• Part 3 - About Fame or Popularity

Done reading? Oke, This Part is about the Technical Ways that make your blog/site Credible, The Design & Contents.

Because each part have a large scale of discussion, I need to break them into sub part a and b. Let’s begin the part a, the b part will follow up later:

Blog’s Design

Is Blog Design important? Hmmm… Yup! It is very important! Beside to brand yourself, it also differentiate yourself from the crowd! Rich Brooks explain this term well.

In the blogosphere, Blog engine that provide you a massive design variation for free is Wordpress. I’m Truly impressed with Wordpress! They really have taken control of the design steps for you without leaving you in a mess of web design terms and tutorials.

You can get hundreds of free “Template” or “Themes” in wordpress.net

But, these themes only compatible with Wordpress only! If you are a Typepad user, or Blogger, I believe they have their own themes/templates directory for you to download and apply to your blogs!

As simple guide on what kind of theme or template that is the best for your blog, Please read below:

No Big Header Image Pleaseee….

Please consider users that are not using any T1 or DSL Internet connection. They will wait long enough to download your big size Header Image. What will they do if the found out nothing but a beautiful header image?

One Click on the Back Button and never come back!

Ryan Jackson also share the same thought : “One of the most common mistakes I see in blog design are layouts that are image heavy — especially when the images are not optimized for the web. This can cause extremely slow page loads and [...]“ Read more >>

Find theme with White or Light Background Color

Light or White Background Color increase readability and Skim-ability. While online reader like to skim on their reading, black color or dark background color with with font color will hurt their eyes. Avoid hurting your reader, or they won’t come back!

Philipp Lenssen Add more ideas : “Use a white background, or use another color at your own risk. Unfortunately, the still-important Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t support varied transparency levels for PNG images, so when you want to show an illustration that contains e.g. a shadow smoothly flowing into your post’s background color, you need to include a specific [...]” Read more >>

Whitespaces your blog

Do add a lot whitespaces on your blog. Don’t stuffed your blog with a lot of banner or glittering images or blinking red and blue floating ads.

Your reader need to rest their eyes, and whitespaces are their resting point. Also avoid long paragraph too. That will make your reader ill reading it. use 2 or 3 sentences per paragraph only. Longer than that will lowering your readability rate.

David Mihm think the same: “One of the most encouraging Web 2.0 developments, in my opinion. Text and images given room to breathe are SO much more powerful [...]” Read more >>

Font Color, Size, and Height

Find theme that using font Arial or Verdana as its default font. With size 12 px and Line height of 1,5 ems is the default and most readable text now. Like this blog, I use Verdana, 12px and 1,5 ems line height.

Nate Whitehill agree with this point on his post: “I’m not going to lie, I was once guilty of using a 9pt font on my blog - and I guarantee that most people who attempted to read my blog either enlarged the text or simply left. Don’t take that chance. Use at least an 11pt size font [...]

Read more >>

Good Navigation Theme

If somebody can’t find your contact me page, or must go through 10 level page to find your email address, they would probably not contacting you and annoyed by your navigation system.

Theme like JohnTP TechnoBlue, or MyJournal have a good navigation system, ease of use and really simple to tweaking.

Jason add more ideas to this point : “One thing that directly influences how well you retain visitors is your blog’s navigation. Making it more navigable and accessible means you get more visitors, your content dosen’t go waste and what’s more, Google crawls your blog better [...]” Read More >>

Dare to be Different!

The easiest way to differentiate your blog is to ask people to design or buy a paid theme instead of the free theme. Beside giving you a unique appearance, It ease yourself to brand your blog in the blogosphere. Pay as little as $50 will get you a good design blog theme.

Try TemplateMonster, Skinforwp, or AllforyourWebsite to get one.

Yup, You can have a lot of design choices, either paid or free, will give your reader a “taste” on your personality. From a design, reader can assume what kind of person you are. But, a design that have nothing but a good images that arrange together is no use at all.

You still need a “content” to make your blog credible. If you can maintain both design and content in a good shape. You blog will gain a good exposure in the blogosphere and change are, you can monetize it for your own good!

The next sub part is about Content. I’ll tell you my perspective in creating content. Not hard at all! You have not need to become a Slogs! You can actually create your own good post content in 30 minutes!

I will reveal it on the next post.

See you again!

Related Post

• My Top 5 Wordpress Themes
• New Theme Design Underconstruction
• 25 Efficient Methods to Strengthen your Blog
• Wordpress - Short Guide to Tweak Your Theme
• Discovering the True Wealth In Blogging - Part 3
• Essential Links for Your Blog Foundation
• Different Sidebar in Single Post
• Informative Master - Sunny the Desi Baba