The Right Design For Your Blog

Arty Template

I wish I had a penny for every minute spent searching for the perfect blog template, (it's like shopping really), it takes up pretty much the same amount of time as it does to create your own theme from scratch.

Anyway lets assume that you are not a designer and would like to either find a great free template for your blog or purchase a premium one. Depending on the platform you have chosen you will have varying degrees of success finding good templates. In my opinion and experience Wordpress delivers the most choice although all of my blogs are now run on Blogger and one of the main reasons is due to the amount of new and fab things you can do with it design wise.

The following templates and designs are examples I have found from some of the main types of blog design available. You will do well in your search if you stick to some of these tags when shopping around.

Cute Template

So, how is your content to be delivered and what kind of design will display your content in the best way? Think - is it a personal, diary style blog? That might work best with a one or two column design. Do you have lots of content? Magazine styles are great for this. Are you a video blogger or will you be posting lots of pictures rather than text? A portfolio template could be in order.

And as for theme? Are you looking for a professional blog? A cute or cartoon blog? How about a really elegant theme for your design blog?

Eyecatching Template

Whatever you decide there are literally thousands of websites and places you can go to try out live demos of free and premium themes. And it really is advisable to try before you buy. 

Some blog templates are extremely easy to upload and edit. Others require some knowledge of html in order to be edited the way you want them. Many sites now offer information and instruction on how to edit your html in order to get the best from a template and customise it.

So what are my own personal views on blog design?

Girly Template

Minimal Template

Minimal Magazine Template

As a writer and a producer of some text and image heavy blogs I have come to love the flexibility of a magazine style blog that is white mainly and has very little in the way of graphics, the images being within the posts themselves.

For my personal blog I have found that a diary style will suffice, opting to use Blogger's own Template Designer and my own graphics. My favourite layout for diary style is three columns, posts in the middle of two sidebars.

When searching for your own blog layout I find the quickest way is to use the image search on whichever engine you prefer. I use Google Image Search and find it brings the best results.

It's a good idea to get your design sorted from the very beginning because although it can be changed at any time the layout of your posts and widgets plus the size of your images depends on working with your desired template. So if it's sorted from day one you can relax and experiment more.

Always try the demo of a template first and read the comments and ratings others have left. Are they complimentary? Are there a lot of questions asking how to change things? Does the creator spend time answering those questions with solutions you can understand?

Stylish Template

Choosing the right blogging platform for your content

One of the more fabulous Wordpress themes

Oh which blogging platform to use? There are free ones, expensive ones, ones in the middle price wise. Some do very basic stuff, others do everything. Some can do everything but you need to know what you are doing. Some make it very easy for the beginner. Here is what I have concluded as my preferences when choosing a blogging platform. I am going to pick my favourites from a well-known bunch...

• Blogger - best for lots of words and search engines. I like it because it's free and easy and very quick to post and upload to. 
• Wordpress - looks nice practically all the time and has a great interface but it can take longer to upload depending on your experience and takes a while longer to get the hang of.
• Typepad - not free but is very good looking and easy to use.
• Tumblr - free and very easy to use. Very good for photo sharing and if you want to build an audience. Not convinced about it's money making assets although your adsense program can be added.

I ran Alice Magazine on Wordpress for a very long time and it took longer to post and format but it's more advanced and the features available reflect that. There is so much to be said for Wordpress, I do love it but currently I am using Blogger for all my blogs. The reasons are simple...it is by far the quickest way to post as many times as I do these days and it's free. I don't have to switch between blog interfaces because my blogs are all under the same dashboard and it has saved me countless hours!

Search engines seem to like my content on blogger and for the beginner I would say it's certainly the place to get your first blog off the ground with no overheads.

Deciding on the aims and objectives of a blog

So you have your area of blogging interest well under your belt. It might be that you have one or two specific interests and will try a seperate blog for each one. Great. But then what are you actually looking to achieve through your blog? Is it a place to wax lyrical in the hope that like-minded others follow you and comment? Is it a traffic builder for another website? Is it a grand money making device? Have a think.

Before I built my own blogs I intended all of them except my personal blog to make some kind of money. I think that relevant, targeted advertising on a niche blog is okay if not overdone or ugly. And it must work on my blogs as I have the click-through to prove it...(although that's for a later post).

The objective of your blog I feel will influence the blogging platform you choose and the design options available to you. Some platforms such as Blogger are very easy to use and speedy. Others like Wordpress are much more interesting design wise yet it requires a slightly steeper, (but not much), learning curve. Some are more suited to personal, diary layouts. Others to portal or magazine styles - better for larger amounts of content and monetisation.

So once you know WHAT to blog about think about the outcome - what are you in this long blogging haul for?