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About This Blog
Hello and welcome to Websites Made Simple. I'm Danny Foo and this is my Malaysia website design blog. I also co-founded a registered Malaysia website design company; Simpleet Solutions. -
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The Perfect Blog Layout
Isn’t conceived and given birth in an overnight effort. Since blogs emerged and are now being taken seriously by corporate bodies, blog designing is evolving with the need of standards compliancy and functional purpose. It’s maturing quicker than we think as more corporate blogs arise and adding to that, some companies are even hiring writers for their blogs.
So, with that cleared out. Let’s start what’s really needed in search of that ‘perfect’ blog layout. Well, you’d definetely need to figure out the content and try to narrow that down. Once that’s done, you’d want to see your competitors online who blog about the same thing. Then add something unique to your entries every time you’re posting. Even an additional cartoon to illustrate how you felt while posting might help. 
Now comes the fun part with lots of work. But not to worry, there’s a very good guide that’s been written by Peter @ Almost Cool, HERE. I simply enjoyed his article and it gave me more confidence to make sure I’m producing a functional design for my upcoming revamp later.
In his article, his guidance on how to come about the perfect layout is a contextual visualisation to success. Whilst reading it, images were already forming in my mind on what needs I’d have to fulfill in my revamp later on. He strongly suggests that ideas should be sketched, arrow-ed, labeled, and scribbled if possible.
A perfect layout should be able to provide a richer user experience. One such example, as I quote Peter:
“Real†design flows from the content. It supports and augments it through non-verbal connotations and subconscious cues. It leads the user’s eye where you want it to be led.
I believe that the more columns you plan to use, the harder it is to guide to user’s eye. However, not to worry since colors can sometimes do wonders for you. 
I’m not really prepared to explain in detail my whole process on designing a blog but would place that somewhere atop my list after the revamp.
In the meantime, is your blog layout functional enough?
Posted by Danny Foo on June 1, 2005 | Filed Under Website Lessons | 
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Comments
7 Responses to “The Perfect Blog Layout”
i dunno. is my layout functional enough?
My honest answer would be to say, “nope..” but I can’t really support it 100% since I’m not a professional blog designer like Peter.
However, here are some suggestions of how you can improve the users experience.
- banner acts as link to Home because you don’t have that button around.
- the Search should be placed atop for quick access.
- your sidebar is too overwhelmed and longated that I believe only a quarter of people would use it. we, humans are just so lazy.
- you might think of enlarging the fonts you used for blog links on the sidebar.
- you might want to experiment with collapsible menus to use on some of the stuff in the sidebar.
cheers.
Emm, typography can be a very interesting subject to study on this matter as well.
There’re websites/blogs that you can just go in and feel just right about it. Partly because of its main content typography selection. Its not just about font size. Font pixels and line height can have different effects on different font style.
Like verdana only looks good at 11px, but georgia can look good with bigger pixel and stronger color. Its like a neverending learning experience.
OOOOH thank you thank you.
Now here is the magic question: can do for me or not ?
;)
uRmm..before that I think Elaine would want me to help her first later. ROFL!
ok ok… then AFTER her. thank you.
Okie, shall add you to the long list of things to do when I get back.