Designing a blog can be an arduous and daunting task. Templates provide good launch points because it is good to have some content already when you start to invest time in an original design.

But this is not a how-to design article, but a how-to improve your design article, so I'm going to talk about the fundamental strong points of any good blog. These apply to both personal and professional or "for money" blogs. They are ways to ensure that your readers have the best possible experience on your site and return regularly to check updates.

Content Presentation

Your content needs to be front and center. The posting area must be the first thing to which the reader's eyes are drawn. If you have a lot of extra bells and whistles, such as one or two sidebars containing links, archives and information about you, make sure the sidebar(s) have a different background and text color, peferably darker than the main content.

Go look at some of the most popular blogs listed at blogpulse.com and you'll see that they favor dark text on a light background. There's a reason for that - people find it easier to read and also to trust a web site designed that way. Don't ask me why, but if you talk to some web-savvy friends, they'll agree.

Syndication

Any good blog design should include a link to the syndicated feed, either in XML, RSS or Atom formats. This allows users who prefer to read their favorite blog updates in a feed reader like BlogLines.com or Google Reader. It is a vastly popular platform for blog consumption and offering a feed for posts and a separate one for comments will encourage lively user interaction, which is key to a blog's success.

Comments

That brings us to comments. Many bloggers prefer to require approval for comments before they post to the site, or they may use a blogging platform which demands that a reader sign up before they can leave a comment. This is all done in an attempt to keep spammers from posting useless or malicious comments on the page, usually through automated software attacks that cover many sites at once with some bogus advertisement.

However, as long as you don't spam your blog address all over the place in stupid and pathetic ways, you should be fine. Spam unto others as you would have them spam unto you. Which is, I presume, not at all.

A blog that does not require approval or sign-up to leave comments on encourages robust and user-friendly dialog between the writer an the readers. Good conversation

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