There’s so many people who have great ideas to share, but for one reason or another they never gain a following on their blogs. It’s not their fault. A compelling reason is because of mediocre blog design.
Big brands know all about this problem. Just look at how much money goes into the design of packaging for products like software, books, and even toothpaste.
Packaging makes up approximately 75% of the cost of the final products we buy off the shelves of retail stores. Designing a blog is similar — it can take huge amounts of time to build even a mediocre looking website to post updates on. But you can do better…
Merging Inspiration with the Realities of Design
Recently I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to build a better design of my own, first for JoeMescher.com and then right here at Social Media Commando. But nothing felt right to me.
I wanted a clean design that had some flair, was easy to navigate and encouraged social media participation. So I went on a hard target search of my favorite blogs, like Copyblogger, Blogussion, Cali Lewis and DIY Themes. You might notice a few elements from their excellent designs blended into this unique blog.
Next I started the process of trial by error. I purposely took a two week ‘sabbatical’ from blogging to create new designs (or ‘skins’ if you’re familiar with WordPress themes). The only way I could be sure a design would fit is to see it in action — think about that before you hire a designer or go about building your own. Updates are often a critical part of the process.
This is where things get technical. You have to know the basics of CSS and a little HTML in order to piece together a kick ass blog that people will find appealing. Don’t believe anyone who says you can ‘set it and forget it’ with respect to the technical details (I know from experience — my first blog designs sucked).
The best way to learn is to visit sites related to design and coding, or find a solution that makes life easier. Here’s how I found an awesome loophole and the technical/design steps I went through to get this blog to the place it is today.
Skeleton – Meat – Muscle
The skeleton that makes all of my blog designs possible is the Thesis Theme for WordPress (affiliate link). Thesis automatically takes care of most of the coding you need, and it’s structured in a way to give you an SEO boost on search engines like Google. In other words, the Thesis Theme is like my blog’s skeleton.
You still need a little code to make your blog shine, and that’s where you’ll need to invest some time learning the basics, or hiring a designer (if you know it’s not feasible to spend a lot of hours curating your site, go with a pro).
One of my favorite resources for learning how to master Thesis design is a site called Art of Blog. That’s the site where I snagged some code to play with full width coloring of my navigation menu, header and footers. Check it out:
Each color represents a different space you can customize. I’d been going nuts trying to figure out a way for my menu bar to span the entire page, and with a simple copy and past this blog was able to make it possible. That’s what I love most about Thesis. So many people make innovative changes to their websites and then share the code online. It’s crowdsourcing to the extreme!
Just by grabbing a copy of the theme and using the one blog post above, you can insert a custom header image, trick out every space on your pages with custom colors and gain some massive visual appeal.
* I use the following sites for learning the color ‘codes’ that tell your computer what to display:
Computer Hope and Colr
*For free and easy to use designs, check out Picnik
So, if Thesis is the skeleton and customizations are the meat, what’s the muscle behind our blog?
You. You’re the catalyst for building something great. For being inspired to learn how to include Facebook Like Boxes onto your site, buying into Photoshop and maybe taking a course…as far down the rabbit hole as you’re willing to explore.
That’s the new and exclusive focus of Social Media Commando — teaching you how to customize your blog and chase your entrepreneurial spirit using social media technology.
Much more to come…
{ 4 comments }