As bloggers, we all want to put as much content as we can on the page, but make it look like as little as we can.

It’s an interesting paradox, which doesn’t always have an answer.

In certain circumstances however, there are indeed ways of cheating the rule, and serving your readers better by doing so.

In this article, I will talk about the 5 main options available to you, and by knowing them, you might find ways to apply them to your own blog.

In the first post, What Is Design Clutter?, we talked about how clutter is caused by too many objects competing for attention.

The problem for any blogger is choosing which objects should get attention and which shouldn’t. It’s hard to accept that something you went to the trouble of putting on your page isn’t worth actively promoting (Because it will steal attention from the things that really do matter).

Separating The Wheat from The Chaff

The best way to avoid clutter and make sure that the valuable parts of your blog are properly promoted is to make a clear list of your priorities. Once it’s written down, it will make design decisions much easier.

Write out a list of every element on your blog (From the blog title right down to the post date!), and then run each aspect through this flowchart:

Choosing the parts of your site that a user sees is all about prominence. The more prominent something is, the more often it will be seen.

The problem with prominence is that it’s relative.

Simply giving something a bright background and a bigger font does not make it prominent. It must stand out in comparison with the rest of the design.

For example, the "Come On In. We’re Hiring" badge on Authentic Boredom may be very noticeable, but if you put it on this site, it would just blend in. They need a different method of getting attention.

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.

The Daily Rambler is a blogging blog. If you’re looking for a new place to get your daily dosage of blogging tips, then you might want to check it out.

What Has Been Done Well?

• The header. The image in particular is striking, and easily the most memorable aspect of the design. The clean black of the rest of the header fits perfectly with the sleek car.

Trackbacks are the messages displayed in the comments list whenever another blog links back to one of your posts. Many blogs disable trackbacks, but not all.

If you use trackbacks on your blog, it is best if they are not mixed with the comments. The comments are a conversation between between real people. Having machine-generated links in the middle of that will only serve to disrupt the conversations.

The method described here will lift out all of the trackbacks, and then display them as a numbered list after the list of comments is finished. Once you have this done, customizing the trackbacks to appear however you want them to is simple.

Photo by TonivS Every free template includes the author’s name near the content of each post. You would have to look hard to find one that didn’t. But why should you keep the name there?

Single and Multiple Authors

The purpose of giving the name so close to a post is to give credit to the person who wrote that post. This is important in multiple-author blogs where the author changes from post to post. Regular readers will be interested to know who is writing which posts, and the writers deserve credit for their work.

However, in a single-author blog, the author does not change from post to post. Regular readers do not need to be told your name over and over again as they know it already and can assume that the writer hasn’t changed.