See the whole series starting with the first post
Question 9: How will you design the look and feel of your blog?
What will newcomers think when they see your Blog for the first time? Will there be a moment of “Wow” or “Woe”?
While I am more familiar with WordPress and Blogger, most of the free Blog Host Services provide any number of “themes” that you can use to present your Blog. In many cases you can type in the name of your Blog, and then just click through the available themes to get a basic idea of how your Blog will look. Understand that typically you can add “widgets” to your Blog to make it more User Friendly and useful.
Assuming you do not want to spend the time (and or cost) to do a completely new theme, your first step will be to walk through the possibilities.
What should you be looking for? You will want at least one Text Column and one “Sidebar”. You’ll notice that as of this writing, Uphill Writing has one text column and three sidebars.
The text column is where your Blog posting will show up. The sidebars are for add-ons like Top Posts, Categories, Polls, and many other possible goodies.
Choose carefully. A narrow text column like Uphill Writing may not fit the image you have for how your words should be displayed. You may not need as many extras on your Blog, or you may want to stack up the extras in a single sidebar.
Until you’ve told anyone about your Blog you can easily experiment with the look and feel. Understand this, no matter how carefully you choose, your Blog is likely to go through some changes before you start telling everyone to come for a visit. Oh, and make no mistake, telling people the address of your Blog before it is ready for Prime Time is not a good idea. If you aren’t standing tall and looking good when your friends visit the first time, it may be hard to get them to drop by again.
In some instances you can include photographs or drawings on the header of your Blog. If you decide you want to do this, you may face some interesting… erm, problems. For one, you need to find images that you can reasonably use on your Blog. Then, depending upon the restrictions of your theme, you may need to use a graphics program to resize the image.
In my opinion, some of the most fun you will have early on with your Blog is working out the design. You don’t need to be an artist, you just need to be able to recognize what looks good.
Finally, while they say you can never make a second “first impression”, you can change the look and feel of your Blog later without losing any of your postings. We’ll discuss this in greater detail later.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio... and isn't it time you experienced some of them?
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