17-Resources-For-Creating-A-Blog-Design

List - blog design blog

1. Weblog Usability - Top Ten Design Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen gives us the run down of the top 10 blog design mistakes. When Jakob talks, I listen… sometimes. I can’t help it, he has a lot to say. But his breakdown of the top 10 design mistakes is quick to the point so give it a read.

2. 13 Blog Cliches

Cliches suck, here are 13 of them for blogs. Yes, the calendar is one of them! Get rid of them please, they clutter blog designs and serve no real purpose.

3. 10 Principles of effective web design

Smashing Magazine does an excellent job of breaking down 10 important principles when it comes to web design, which also applies to blog design. Go read and learn.

4. What Makes Good Blog Design?

Well if you have been wondering about this question all along, Steven guides you through 10 important points to blog design.

5. 11 Factors to Consider When Designing Your Blog Theme

DailyBlogTips takes the usual lists of 10 points and tops it by adding one more. Go read it to find what that one more is.

6. 8 Reasons to Redesign Your Blog

This is for the people who are still unsure if it is worth the time to invest in a new blog design.

7. If your blog looks crap, it IS crap!

I think someone forgot to give him a hug when he was a kid, but he does make some good points.

8. 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

That is about 20 more different design variations to consider when designing your blog. Of course you could make every page look exactly alike, but adding little tweaks here and there for different pages make it looks nice and lets the reader know they are on a different page.

9. Five Blog Design Mistakes that Make You Look dumb

Yeah, they really do make you look dumb. Ok, maybe not. But they definitely make your blog design worst. Check them out.

10. 5 Simple Ways to Make Your Blog Design POP

Article focuses on different things you can experiment with in order to make your blog design POP and get noticed more. This article was part of my blog design 101 series that is still ongoing.

11. 99 Sites All Designers Must Know

Jacob gives us not only a great list, but one that includes a screen shot of each site as well, which is cool. There are 99 of them so you better get started.

12. Best Design RSS Button Collection

A ton of RSS buttons to make sure no one misses your feed. On top of that, it makes your subscribe button look cool.

13. 20+ Free Web Design Ebooks and Guides

For those who are unwilling to spend a dime on real books.

14. Web Developer’s Handbook

A ton of links to web design resources all on one page. One downfall to this list is that it doesn’t seem updated with the latest, but there are still a lot of great stuff here that is relevant.

15. 101 Typography Resources for Web Designers

Steven at Vandelay Design searches the web using his super powers to bring us 101 typography resources. Great list of resources on typography.

16. Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers

All the free icon resources gathered in one place. Great for adding some visual interest to your blog design. Don’t get carried away and make everything into a button.

17. 25 Must Buy, Borrow, or Steal Books for Web Designers

My take on 25 books that are valuable for web designers and blog designers alike. Yes, I have read them and scribbled along the sides of the books with notes and epiphanies. I think some very old and wise guy once said “A book is not yours until you scribbled the hell out of the insides of it” or something along those lines.

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31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge (2)

Today is Day 2 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge and today your task is to Do a First Time Reader Audit on your blog.

Get a friend or family member who has never read your blog before and sit them down at a computer.

Load your blog up and let your friend surf it.

Don’t talk to them as they do - but watch carefully how they use your blog.

* How do they navigate?
* Where do they click?
* What do they pause to read?
* What do they skip over?

Once they’ve surfed your blog ask them some questions about the experience.

* What were their first impressions?
* What did they first think your blog was about when they arrived at it?
* Did they find it easy to read/navigate/understand?
* What did they ‘feel’ when they first arrived at your blog?
* What suggestions do they have on how you could improve your blog?
* What questions do they have having surfed your blog?
* What words would they use to describe the design?
* What are the main things that they remember about your blog 10 minutes later?

It’s amazing to see what you’ll learn by watching someone use your blog.

Once you’ve done your First Time Reader Audit come back to this post and let us know what you learned.

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31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge (1)

Your task for this first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.

Create a great impression upon a brand new readers to your blog by choosing a commenter that is new and emailing them to thank them for their comment.

It might not sound like the most profound tip but I’ll let you in on a secret - this is one of the main strategies I used to build up ProBlogger’s audience a couple of years ago.

What I found is that when you do it the chances of the readers that you email coming back to your blog again increases significantly. Get them to come back to your blog once and you increase the chances of them coming back again… and again….

So email a reader now, thank them for commenting and tell them that you’re looking forward to further interactions.

Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). While there are some tools out there that do this automatically for you - the more personal you can make it the better.

This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.
Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?

Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog - they wanted hundreds or thousands.

This blogger failed to realize two things:

1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because they like to spread the word. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth and social networking sites etc.

2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.

While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly - the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly. Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.

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NEW IN BLOG??? WHAT IS BLOG??

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.This is several people opinion about what is blog:

A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser (source) http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog

From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger (source)

http://www.computersprintersrepairshouston.com/glossary_of_terms.html

A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc (source)

http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly (source)

http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences (source)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog


SO WHAT IS A BLOG?????

Iam here put it as simply as possible - a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

(Rearranged from various source)

Iam a new blogger. Iam also learn how to make a good blog, how to write as a good blogger. So lets join this blog and give your comment, we share information about blog here. I think if we have a motivation as a blogger, we can do it.


BE A BLOGGER IS ONE OF ALL MY DREAM…..

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Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

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