Could It Be? Your Blog Design Really Matters?

In Does Your Blog Design Matter?, Instigator Blog’s Ben Yoskovitz asks you if your blog design is as important to you as it should be: The beauty of blogging is that you can always change things, experiment and see what works. This holds true for copywriting, social networking and your blog design. You might start […]

Weekly Digest: Guest Blogging on Problogger, Prejudice, WordPress News and Contests, Blog Design, and Special Invitation to a Party

The Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress this week features guest blogging on Problogger, some great feedback on some posts I’ve written recently, more wonderful reviews and recommendations of my new book (they are going fast – get your order in now!), and getting ready for WordCamp next month! Don’t forget, you can subscribe to […]

Is Your Blog Design Holding You Back?

In a guest post on ProBlogger, Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home wrote Is Your Blog Template Holding You Back? In the first few months of blogging, there was SO much to learn. I figured that SEO was one of those battles I would tackle once I was “more established”. But after 9 months or […]

Blogging Tips Book: Best Blog Design Elements

The following excerpt is from Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging by Lorelle on WordPress. The ideal blog design is one that: Downloads in less than 10 seconds. Never requires scrolling left or right or resizing the window. Limits up and down scrolling. Contains easy to find navigation. Features design elements in […]

Blog Design: How Many Columns?

Mark from Weblog Tools Collection offers Two or Three Columns?, his perspective on how many columns a blog should have. I personally prefer one column themes with a minimal second column. Most information that is put on my sidebar(s) is extraneous and could be placed elsewhere. I have also found that some of that information […]

Top 9 Javascripts for Your Website or Blog Design

Code Coffee’s Top 9 Javascripts for Your Website is worth a look if you are using the full version of WordPress. However, be sure and take a look at how to use Javascript in WordPress before you incorporate these javascripts into your WordPress blog or site. The list includes Javascripts to help with forms, opening […]

Blog Design: The Nature of Fonts

While content sells your blog to its audience, the readability isn’t just based on the words, it’s also based upon the letters. The fonts you choose to design your website or blog can make or break your audience’s ability to read the words. I’ll be talking a lot more about what fonts work best with […]

Blog Exercises: Ingredients of a Well-Designed Site

I was asked by a student in my WordPress class recently what defined a “professional blog,” one that met all the criteria for a well-designed, well-formed site that met web standards. What a marvelous question! We brainstormed all the elements that make up a web standard site, and mixed in personal preferences of the students […]

Blog Exercises: When Your Site Design Owns You

Yesterday a long-time client called me up in tears saying, “I can’t do this any more. My site design owns me, I don’t own it. It’s too confusing. It’s too much work!” Several years ago, she’d chosen a Magazine-style WordPress Theme. The structure was based upon the standard magazine-style, sticky posts for the slider/carousel at […]

Should You Design Your Own Blog?

A while ago, a popular blogger, asked me to review his blog design for improvements. Just so you know, I do this for a living, and my review isn’t cheap. 😉 I gave him my review, pointing out the flaws, misalignments between identity and design, and improvements that would not just help his page ranking […]

Blog Challenge: Top Ten Blog Interface Designs

Business Logs offers “The Web’s Best Interface Design” websites, and I thought I’d challenge you to: List Your Top Ten Best Interface Designed Blogs As part of my ongoing blogging challenges, I want you to blog about your ten favorite designed blogs from a different perspective: user friendly navigation. Pretty is important, but what is […]

WordPress Plugins for Blog Layout, Formating, and CSS Designs

If you want to change the look of your WordPress Theme, you can edit the Theme’s stylesheet. There are a variety of tools to help you. I’ve featured a lot of them in this Month of WordPress Plugins series, including: WordPress Plugins for Images, Photographs, and Graphics WordPress Plugins That Play With Paper and Documents […]

Beauty is Only Skin Deep: Designing Blogs For Feeds, Search Engines and Audience

Crabby Night Owl’s post, “Substance Not Style is King”, caught my attention: About 20% of the hits CNO gets come via the newsfeeds, and I wanted to see what those feeds looked like when they’re read. What I saw was plain, unformatted text, devoid of any style that I may have imparted to it on […]

Robin’s Blog – Blogging Tips to Help You Learn about Web Page Design and Development

I’m a big fan of Robin’s Blog aka Take My Advice – I’m Not Using It!. Based upon a series of classes at the Regional Occupational Program’s Web Page Design Program in Pleasant Hill, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Robin Wood offers students excellent information on web design, web development, and web technologies, […]

A Study on the Art of a Well-Designed Weblog

Lars Holst offers a Well-Designed Weblogs Introduction as: A subjective and non-scientific selection of usable and readable weblogs that are defined as having an aesthetically pleasing design that has been accomplished through the use of stylesheets rather than layout tables, font tags, and inline images. Well, for a subjective and non-scientific approach, I have to […]