If you have the technical and design know how to create and implement your own blog design, then this may be the route for you when you redesign your blog. Here are some tips and things to remember when creating your new custom blog design.
When creating your new design, keep in mind the subject matter, goals and theme of your blog. Try to match your color scheme, graphics and layout to those. If you aren’t sure how to do this, talk to someone (like your readers or a professional blog designer). Outside input can be hugely important in creating a blog design that works for you and your blog.
As I mentioned last week, a key feature to your blog design is user-friendliness. This bears repeating: “light text on dark backgrounds are very hard on your readers’ eyes. Having music, flashing text or graphics and/or scrolling text or graphics is also tough on readers’ (and their browsers).”
When working on your blog design, it’s a good idea to set up a test blog. If you’re modifying your current design, you can import that into your test blog to start. If you’re creating a new design from scratch, create it there first. Not only will this make sure that all your changes work with your blog software and layout, but you won’t risk “breaking” your main blog.
When creating your new design, go slow. By that I mean change just one thing at a time on your test blog. This isn’t just for aesthetic reasons: if you “break” something, you’ll know what caused the error. If you change six things in one edit and suddenly your test blog doesn’t work, you won’t know which of the things caused the problem.
However, be sure to try different things. I recently did a blog design with a color palette the client had chosen from ColourLovers.com. The palette was beautiful—but the way I used the colors on the page wasn’t. I could have redone the entire color scheme (which wouldn’t take that long), or changed the way I used the colors on the page, but instead I went hunting for more colors (back on ColourLovers) that worked with the “good” colors.
Other than new colors, here are some other small tweaks that can really change your blog’s feel (and the appropriate caveats):
- Font face: make sure it’s easy to read and works across many different computers (not everyone has the same fonts preinstalled on their computer as you do!)
- New header: I recommend not making the header so large that visitors can’t see at least your first post when the page loads. Also, be careful how wide you make it: not everyone has a widescreen laptop.
- Layout: If at all possible, use your blog software’s options to change the number or layout of columns
Now I think I’ll take my own advice: Readers, what do you think of this blog’s layout, colors and graphics? Are they easy to read and understand? Do they match what you perceive as the purpose, goals and theme of MamaBlogga? I’m ready for your feedback (*braces self*)!