Friday Five: “Must-Have” Blog Design Elements

As I have mentioned, I read a lot of blogs. Right now, I have a bit over 100 subscriptions in Google Reader. But I don’t just read the RSS feed. I also have Gina Trapani‘s Better GReader addon for Firefox, so by clicking an article title in GReader, I can see the article as it looks on the site. Often, if I like the way the site looks, I’ll visit "in person." And while I can often comment through GReader (especially on self-hosted blogs), I generally visit the actual blog out of habit.

It continues to amaze me how some of the design elements I now take so much for granted, are missing, hidden, or confusing on other blogs. If we assume the intent of a blogger is to share their writing with others, the apparent (although, I’m sure, accidental) pains some take to inhibit that sharing are comical, at best.

I recently updated the Twisted Nether Wiki with a new World of Warcraft blog. One of the items we request (so I don’t have to go hunting for it) is a link to the blog’s RSS feed. This particular blog was on blogspot.com, and the author stated she wasn’t using RSS yet. Of course, I know better: On every Blogger theme, down at the very bottom of the home page, is an RSS link: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Somewhat hidden, true, but if you know where to find it…

Item 1: RSS Feed Link

Sure, almost every blog has one, but not all (by a long shot!) are easy to find. This is quite a simple thing to add to any blog (both wordpress.com and blogspot.com support more than the "bottom of the page" default; it’s quite easy to make it more visible).

Your RSS link should be at or near the top of your blog

Your RSS link should be near the top of your blog, definitely "above the fold" (that’s newspaper-speak for the part of your page a viewer sees when it first loads). My very strong recommendation is to place it no lower than immediately below the title of your blog or navigation bar, whichever is lower; in other words, at the very top of one of your sidebars. For example, my nav bar is immediately below my site banner, and my RSS feed links (for both RSS reader and email) are immediately below that. Some themes position the RSS button at the very top of the page; others, as part of the navigation bar. In fact, that’s the default position for Thesis.

You’ll note my RSS links are stylized to fit within the overall color and design of my blog, but that is by no means essential. In fact, sometimes I wonder if they blend in too well! The ubiquitous orange RSS symbol is now a web standard, and there’s not a thing wrong with it. But I’m sure you’ve seen all manner of stylizing, as well. One of my favorites is at Pike’s Aspect of the Hare, and is pictured to the right. If you know hers is primarily a blog devoted to Hunters in World of Warcraft, and if you know also that WoW Hunters use "traps" quite a bit, the awesomeness of the visual pun really hits home.

Want something unique for your blog? A quick search across the ‘net will reveal thousands of possibilities. The most important thing is to be sure you have that link. Oh, and while we’re at it: Be sure all RSS links point to the same place! I’ve found a lot of blogs with links to FeedBurner, but the blogger never redirected the default link. That generally takes a very small tweak to one of your theme files (index.php, footer.php, or header.php), but will ensure, if you’re using FeedBurner, you see a more accurate number of subscribers.

Item 2: Contact Link

Something that is harder to find on many blogs (because it flat-out isn’t there!) is an email link to the blogger, or a link to a contact page. Why is this important? A few days ago, I was visiting a friend’s blog and noticed she had two fairly prominent RSS links, one right above the other. On a hunch (because one was clearly a FeedBurner link, and the other looked like a theme default), I moused over both. Yep, two different links. It’s really not a huge deal: FeedBurner aggregates all feeds from a site pretty effectively. But stylistically, it’s probably something most of us would want to correct. After all, not all of our readers (in fact, probably not all bloggers) might know that either link will provide an equally robust RSS feed.

There will be times when a reader will want to interact with you…give them a contact point!

It was a pretty simple task to find the blogger’s contact page, fill in the short form and give her a head’s up. But there have been other times, when a more serious coding error was evident, that I couldn’t do that, and had to resort to commenting on a blog post to alert a blogger to an issue.

There will be times–perhaps not many, but at least a few–when a reader will want to interact with you outside the comments section of your posts. Give them that outlet! It can be an email link, a graphic that shows your email address (thereby reducing the chance for spam), or, as I have done, a contact form.

Item 3: Tell Your Readers About You

An "About" page tells readers why you are qualified to write about your subject.

There are a lot of people who are very reluctant to share personal information with strangers, whether over the Internet or otherwise. I certainly appreciate that. Your "About" page doesn’t need to be an autobiography. But it should describe you to the extent that it establishes your bona fides: Why are you qualified to talk about whatever it is you’re going to discuss on your blog?

Now don’t get hung up on the "qualifications" idea: A simple desire to write is plenty of qualification for many. But if you’re going to blog about how to play a holy priest in World of Warcraft, a static statement of your experience and other relevant factors isn’t too much to ask.

Many bloggers do this with a simple text widget in a sidebar, with a couple of sentences about who they are or why they’re blogging. Others (the minority, to be sure) provide a life story, résumé, and curriculum vitae! My own "About" page describes my gaming background, as well as some details of my academic and personal careers, concluding with a bit more personal information. I’m not concerned about "Internet stalkers" but I’m also not going to put my cellphone number out there (or my street address).

Share what you’re comfortable with, but try to put something out there to help your readers get to know you better.

Item 4: Provide a Search Box

This is a default in just about every blogging theme, regardless of platform.¹ Believe me, there will come a time when a reader–or you, yourself–will want to find something in your blog.

Give your readers tools to explore more of your blog!

For WordPress, there are plenty of search addons, but I’m pretty happy with the default function built in to the platform. Most addons do more in-depth indexing, so searches may be faster and results more robust. If you find your default isn’t meeting your needs, it’s a pretty easy task to implement a better solution.

The key is, give your readers the tools they need to explore more of your blog…and that is a perfect seque into:

Item 5: Organize Your Archives

I will be the first to admit, I am pretty bad at providing internal links in my articles. In fact, let’s be honest: I suck at it. Complete and epic failure: that’s me. However, I have provided you several ways to find stuff. First, of course, is the (currently MIA) search box. I also have a sitemap listed in the navigation bar. I have a calendar, to show you on what days I published stuff. I use categories (and fortunately for all of us, a lot fewer than I used to have!) for every article and tags for most articles.

I also have a tag cloud (which isn’t as comprehensive as I’d like, but there were aesthetic considerations at play in that area). But most importantly, I have a couple of handy drop-down boxes in the first sidebar. The first organizes all my posts by month, so if you know what you’re looking for was earlier this month, you can pull up a listing of everything I wrote in September. The second lists items by category, which is okay unless you’re looking for a generic WoW article or one on blogging. Hey…I never said it was perfect!

The point is, if you want to find something here that isn’t necessarily on the front page, I’ve given you a lot of tools to do that. Do the same for your readers, and they will love you for it!

So there are my five "must-haves" for blog design. Are there any you find fault with? What did I leave out that you believe is critical to a successful blog? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!