Melissa Culbertson - Blog Design For Dummies

Blog Design For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936849

ISBN 978-1-118-55480-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-55499-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-55478-4 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Introduction

T he average person spends roughly three seconds on a website before deciding whether to stay. Thats not enough time to read your latest blog post and know your blog is awesome. Instead, design impacts that decision. If the visitor does happen to stay, you want to keep them around with a blog that just plain makes sense to use.

This book seeks to help you improve your blog design, whether youre starting from scratch, redesigning an existing blog, or simply tinkering with your current design. I cover blog design in ways you might expect design principles, colors, and fonts and in ways you might not know are actually part of design navigation, usability, and shareability. This book breaks all that down in an approachable, easy-to-use format so you can design a blog that encourages readers to stick around.

About This Book

Think of this book as a design guide for the average (and awesome) blogger. Most bloggers dont have experience with design or coding. You simply have a voice you want to share through your blog. Whether you design a blog yourself, hire someone, or purchase pre-made design elements, this book gives you to tools to understand what makes a blog successful from a design and navigation standpoint.

This book is geared towards bloggers of all skill levels, although if youve been blogging for a while you may already know some of these tips or techniques. But not so fast! You may have been blogging for a long time but never knew underlying design principles, basic color theory, or exactly how to do a particular technique I mention. That means everyone learns something from this book.

By the end of this book, youll know:

What constitutes good blog design and why design matters in the first place

How to ensure your blog design syncs with your blog goals, your audience, and your content

Ways to customize your blog design, from headers to footers and everything in between

How to design your blog to be easy to navigate and use

Ways to create design-friendly content to improve readability

You can work through this book page by page or completely out of order. Youll find value either way. In typical For Dummies fashion, this book makes it easy to find what youre looking for with clearly outlined parts, chapter intros that spell out what youll learn, and a detailed index to find your way to something specific.

Finally, this book isnt meant to intimidate you when it comes to blog design. In fact, my goal is to empower you to take control of your blog design and feel confident about it. Even when your design is complete, use this book as your design guide when you need help with a specific piece of your design or just want to browse through examples of great blog design.

Foolish Assumptions

Forgive me, but Im about to make some assumptions about your blogging knowledge. I expect that if you picked up this book, you know some of the basics of blogging such as uploading a photo, publishing a blog post, and installing plug-ins. I assume that most bloggers who buy this book already have a blog, but if you dont then you can still find value in this book. It just wont cover the beginning steps of how to set up a blog and get things rolling.

The majority of this book is not geared towards any specific blog platform; however, when I show you steps, they are typically for the WordPress.org platform because its the most popular one. The majority of plug-ins that I mention are also for WordPress, although some plug-ins can be used on multiple blog platforms. When possible, I mention options for Blogger, Tumblr, and a few other platforms, too. I also assume that you arent a developer or professional blog designer. I wrote this book to make good blog design achievable for the masses, so my advice wont always be the most complex or require you to dig deep into your code. However, it will always be geared toward helping bloggers without a design or technical background achieve a blog design they can be proud to show their friends and fellow bloggers.