Despite the fact that designing a blog allows for flexibility, nothing much has changed over the years.
Almost every blog you see will consist of the following elements: home page, category list, archive, articles as well as an About and Contact page.
And since there’s always a way to use these elements of a blog better, let’s look at each of them:
#1: The sidebar
Some people get rid of the sidebar altogether. This might not work for everyone. Yet when people try to cram too much information here, it just makes the text smaller and not helping your blog at all. Sidebars are just navigations aids – let them stay that way.
#2: The Home page
The home page of most blogs these days are usually a glorified RSS feed. Readers are not going to visit the homepage first even if that’s what you think they would do. Instead, why don’t you post link to the most recent articles in all categories on this page like newspapers do.
#3: Individual articles
Let’s face it: people will check an article of yours, thanks to their search engine results, rather than be directed to your home page. It is for this reason you should make it easy for them to find ‘related content’ as well. But what will make it stand out is if there’s a bit of ‘About’ text on every page too.
#4: Navigation
If your blogs are time-based, then it’s only fair to allow users to navigate the blog’s content by date, month and year. However, if it isn’t, you can sort out the articles by category instead. Of course, it could be just about anything and really depends on how much you know about your audience.
#5: Comments
One of the biggest problems is that the comments section is too small. With threaded comments being a common feature these days, it helps to make the comments sections as wide as the space used for the article itself.