Basic desingig & blogs

Designing of Basic websites and blogs

Trainings by Vidya Bhagwat
Introduction
• The objec5tives of this chapter is to make you understand about
designing of various blogs and websites Blogs:
• Designing a blog is easy. Whatever engine you are using and
whatever style you prefer, you’ll always find a number of
templates you can apply to your weblog in seconds. No styling is
necessary, no playing with colors is needed and no mind jogging
about content presentation is required. However, not every
weblog should look like a typical blog. After all, not every
blogger wants his or her site to look exactly like hundreds of
other ones. In fact, there is a small bunch of creative,
outstanding and individually designed from scratch blogs.

Fonts
• Designing for the web requires as a fundamental assumption the understanding
that accessing information on a computer screen or on a mobile device is a
completely different experience for the user than the one of reading a newspaper,
magazine or book or from the one of watching a typical TV set. If you keep using the
same assumptions for designing the interface to your valuable content as if you had
a print magazine or a television program to direct, you are only going to waste tons
of money and time What about fonts?
Keep two goals in mind:
a) font compatibility
b) font legibility.
• These are the only two things you care about for now when it comes to fonts. What
do they mean?
• For compatibility, what you need to make sure is that the font you chose to use is
visible also on other people computers and browsers, across a variety of computer
types and operating systems. Some cool fonts or ways of displaying them maybe
available only on your computer, but then when readers will go to your site they
may not see the same fonts you had selected or they may see them displayed in a
different way. Do a check and you can find out.

Fonts
• For legibility you need to select a
font that makes your text look
legible, not fancy or unique. You'll
provide those qualities to your
content by the way you will
format and package it for delivery.
Chose therefore a font that is not
too small and restrain yourself
from anything too decorative or
fancy.

Web templates
• This above is really just some basic advice for your first web
site design. How to go about implementing these principles is
your next hurdle. My personal, strong recommendation is to
steer clear of coding HTML. Unless that is your professional
role do not design your site by coding it yourself with tools
like Dreamweaver, FrontPage or any other web editor you are
secretly hoping to use soon. That is the old way of doing web
sites. There is too much tech know-how to know for you to do
a good job on this if you do it by hand this way.

Site Design Strategy Be Simple Focus:
• To design your web site think first about what
content you are going to have.
• Well yes, when it comes to web design things
should really be guided by the architecture of
your content. That is, your site should be
designed around the type of content, and
experience you want your users to have on your
site.
• When a reader comes to your site, she either
comes because she has searched for something
on Google and has found your site, or she has
come because someone has told her that there is
something interesting to see or to do at your site.
Yes, she may also have found your link on another
site or social media venue where someone
recommended to visit your site.

Design Style- Don’t Be Nice – Be Analytical
• Another essential key rule to design a web
site that feels and looks professional is to
avoid going after the "nice" idea. What do
I mean? Everyone has his own idea of
what looks nice, but unless you are a pro
designer my advice is to actively steer
away from trying to achieve that "nice"
feeling. It's simply the wrong goal. See
everyone's got a different kind of nice in
his head, and again, unless you have spent
time learning what are the key strategic
elements to make things look nice, you are
just going to make a site that pleases only
yourself.
• So, what you should really go after is not
"looking nice" but after being
• a) focused, and being
• b) legible.
•

1. Instructional – Instructional posts tell people how to do something. I find that
my Tips posts are generally the ones that are among my most popular both in the
short term (ie loyal readers love them and will link up to them) but also in the
longer term (ie one of the reasons people search the web is to find out how to do
things and if you can rank highly with your tips post you can have traffic over a
length of time).
2 . Informational – This is one of the more common blog post types where you
simply give information on a topic. It could be a definition post or a longer
explanation of some aspect of the niche that you’re writing on. This is the crux of
successful.
3. Reviews – Another highly searched for term on the web is ‘review’ – I know
every time I’m considering buying a new product that I head to Google and search
for a review on it first. Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every
product or service you can think of. Give your fair and insightful opinion and ask
readers for their opinion – reviews can be highly powerful posts that have a great
longevity.
Types Of Post Blogs

4. Interviews – Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to
say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an
interview (or a guest post). This is a great way to not only give your
readers a relevant expert’s opinion but to perhaps even learn
something about the topic you’re writing yourself. One tip if you’re
approaching people for an interview on your blog – don’t overwhelm
them with questions. One of two good questions are more likely to get
you a response than a long list of poorly thought through ones.
5. Case Studies - Another popular type of post here at Pro Blogger have
been those where I’ve taken another blog and profiled them and how
they use their site to earn money from their blogging (eg – one I did on
Buzz machine – the blog of Jeff Jarvis). Sometimes these are more like
a review post but on occasion I’ve also added some instructional
content to them and made some suggestions on how I’d improve
them. Case studies don’t have to be on other websites of course –
there are many opportunities to do case studies in different niches.

6. Profiles – Profile posts are similar to case studies but focus in on a
particular person. Pick an interesting personality in your niche and do
a little research on them to present to your readers. Point out how
they’ve reached the position they are in and write about the
characteristics that they have that others in your niche might like to
develop to be successful.
7. Collation Posts – These are a strange combination of research and
link posts. In them you pick a topic that you think your readers will
find helpful and then research what others have said about it. Once
you’ve found their opinion you bring together everyone’s ideas
(often with short quotes) and tie them together with a few of your
own comments to draw out the common themes that you see.

8. Debate – I used to love a good debate in high school – there was
something about preparing a case either for or against something that I
quite enjoyed. Debates do well on blogs and can either in an organized
fashion between two people, between a blogger and ‘all comers’ or
even between a blogger and… themselves (try it – argue both for and
against a topic in one post – you can end up with a pretty balanced
post).
9. Prediction and Review Posts – We see a lot of these at the end and
start of the year where people do their ‘year in review’ posts and look
at the year ahead and predict what developments might happen in
their niche in the coming months.

Basic desingig & blogs

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