Pro Blog Design

Business Blog Wire is a blog run by Easton Ellsworth. The blog is focused particularly on businesses blogging, but also for any money-making bloggers out there.

So, what can be said about its design? It’s a plain design, but it works. There is a lot of content, and a lot of links to other sites in its blog network.

What Has Been Done Well?

• Post headings. Have a look at the headings and you’ll see why I think they’re great. Scanning down the home page for post titles is not a problem here.

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23 Lessons From Eye-Tracking Studies A list of usability pointers worth printing out, then laminating and sticking to the wall.

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Many of us include the time in our comments.

The comments should serve as a conversational area, and it makes sense that you would be interested in when the last reply was written, or how long it has been since you left your reply.

However, time is relative to where you are in the world. While it is nearly 10pm here in the UK, it is past 3 in the morning in India. On the internet, hearing the time is meaningless if you don’t also know the time-zone it is in.

And that begs the question; why do we bother to include the time in the comments at all?

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A few weeks ago I ran an offer where I would give 5 free tips on anyone’s blog’s design. The offer went down very well, and I’d like to share some of what I have learnt so far.

Every design is unique of course, however, there are some small flaws that I found to be common across quite a number of blogs.

The 5 Pointers

1. Take care with your logo. A fast-loading blog is important, but not everything is worth forsaking for its sake. In particular, a lot of bloggers have compressed their banner images to a point where pixelation around the letters is noticeable. Your logo is too important for this.

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Elements of Great Web Design Covers so many fundamentals of web design that I couldn’t say anything more than read Read More »

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Advanced Page Optimization I’ll be working on page load times here soon, and this is the best article I’ve found Read More »

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Since writing about the benefits of a sideblog, the idea has taken off. Sideblogs are a great way of quickly updating your readers. However, you’re still left with the problem of how to set one up.

There are various methods, including the use of Twitter or Tumblelog and then importing an RSS feed. However, those methods don’t give enough control for me, so the method I’m using is done entirely in WordPress.

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