Easy Blog Design Tutorials for the Blogspot Blogger (#1)

Blogspot is a great blog platform for beginners. It's free, easy to learn, and has plenty of design capabilities and built in plugins. 

BUT, if you use one of the original blogger themes or backgrounds, they can start blending together, and every Blogspot blog looks the same. I visit a lot of blogs -- I know this from experience. 

You want to to stick out from the whole band of bloggers. You want people to keep visiting your blog, right? Content is key, but so is a professional looking blog design. 

I'm going to help with that. Today I start the first post of a new series: easy blog design tutorials for the blogspot blogger. 

Each post I'll focus on something different. I'll gather a bunch of links from the internet (today is more me talking than rounding up links. Links will come later, don't you worry.) and round them up in one post for your convenience.

We're going to start with the bare minimum basics today. Basically, what you see when you first arrive a blog.

image

a header

Basically, the header is the first impression of a blog. If you have a professional looking header and overall blog design, I'm 1,010% more likely to stay around (and especially follow). Even though it sounds selfish and weird, I like reading blogs that are pleasing to look at. 

Here's a post on blog headers. (this blog actually has a bunch of awesome blogging tutorials, so do explore.)

I gather my images from my Pinterest and created the header using Picmonkey.

What you want in a header: 

- Easy to read fonts. Swirly fonts are fine (I have one myself), but make sure it's readable. 

- Pair your fonts (Search for "font pairings" on Pinterest and you'll find a bunch of ideas.) so they don't fight for attention.

- Quality images. No fuzzy ones, please. We want to see what we're looking at.

- People to get a good idea of what your blog is about. You don't want dogs in your header if you have a writing blog, and vice versa. 

- Simplicity is best. 

- Leave white space.

posts 

(Haha, Katie. Obviously we want to see the posts.) 

I'm talking about the general post page you see when you arrive at a blog. Two possible questions that you might have:

how many posts should I display per page? -- I have mine set at four posts on the home page right now. (before readers have to click older posts.) I wouldn't go anymore than five. The more posts you have on your home page, the longer your blog will take to load, and readers won't ever reach your footer.

should I have a "read more" option? -- No. Nope nope nope. I asked people this question on my Twitter, and the answers were unanimous: People don't like wasting time clicking around. 

Yes, the read more option might get you more pageviews, and yes, it makes your home page look cleaner...

...BUT don't do it. Resist. It will ultimately keep people from reading your content. (*raises hand guiltily*)

fonts

I cannot stress enough how important readable fonts are. I see this advice all over the internet, but yet every one out of ten blogs I visit has an unreadable font.

WE CAN'T READ YOUR POST WITH A CURLY FONT. It's not cute. I'll  leave. 

Leave your fonts black or a dark grey (like mine). No yellows. Or even blues. Colorful fonts aren't the way to stand out. 

For the background of your blog, a white is best, or a very, very light color. Simplicity is best.

footer

The footer is the place at the bottom of your blog where half of readers never see, but the other half happens to scroll down far enough to see that ugly white space. 

So make use of that ugly white space and put something lovely in. A few ideas I've seen people use: 

- Social media widget. (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook...) 

- Contact email. 

- List of some of your favorite blogs. 

- Blog button.

- A widget tracking your novel's progress.

navbar 

The navbar is the transparent/colored at the top of a Blogspot blog that looks like this: 

You'd be best to get rid of it if you want to look professional. I just figured out a month ago that I even had this thing. It's really easy, too: 

go to layout in your blogger dashboard.

click edit where you see the navbar.

this will pop up:

click off and then save. 

Boom. Simple as that.

colors

Every blog should have a color scheme, whether it's pastels or bright red and oranges. (I would advise not going crazy on the colors.)

Simplicity is best. 

You can find awesome color schemes for a blog on Pinterest. I would advise finding a color scheme you like and sticking to it: don't add in any extra colors.

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Aaand that's it! I promise others in the series will have more tutorials and helpful links. View this one as an introductory post of sorts. ;)

- Katie Grace

Sooo, do you have a navbar at the top of your blog? Did you even know what it was or were you guiltily unaware like me? 

What would you like to see next? 

a. sidebar.

b. post footer. 

c. pages. (tabs.)