Are you going mad ?
Designing and redesigning your blog?
What do you do ,with your blog first?
Should you have a blog facial first?
Maybe a hair spa would be better.
Chatting with my BFFs I realized we all love our blogs ,to look pretty.
It’s where you are everyday.
It’s your face in the digital world.
It’s obvious you want that glow.
Head to toe of your blog
Content
Traffic
Appearance
The courses about “how __made six figures on 6 days is making you depressed.
News flash.
Everyone is on the same boat.
Trying to know the secret sauce to make the perfect Blog.
If something has worked for you.
Will it work for me?
Nobody really knows it all.
Blogging is a reflection of life itself.
You have your strengths .
Some weaknesses.
But everyday when you get up remember 3 things
1)Your own self hosted blog is your online real estate.That’s Big
It’s huge !
It’s a piece of the internet which you own.
Not a renter.It’s yours forever ,if you want it to be.
It’s your chance at digital immortality.
2)Doing it the right way .A basic framework.
Some rules are same.
Valuable content
Traffic
Monetization
This is behind 90 % of blog dreams.
Time is precious.
If you want the best use of your time don’t constantly fidget with your blog.
We all do it .We waste entire days changing themes, colours and fonts.
It’s like online shopping.
Addictive.
Not productive .
But after saying all this ,I still wrote this post.
The number one reason was:
The answer my blogger friends gave.
Simple question .
What’s the one thing you need help with on your blog?
Mayuri was bang on
“How to dress up your blog” making it aesthetically appealing .”
The million dollar answer.
Aesthetics!
Women love pretty blogs .
Samjoth says
-
Blog attire
-
Blog logo
-
Blog colours
-
Blog layout
-
Blog design
-
Blog theme
This is the difference between “what a man wants & what a woman wants”.
Interestingly both want the same.Only in different words.
I decided to find out the secrets behind a “glowing blog “.
Copybloggers ,Pinch of yum and Amylynnandrews.com are popular blogs .
Have a look at their blog design.
From top to toe this is my” Blog to Beautiful ” :Part 1 ,in my mompreneurs blogging journey.
Step 1
Set up your mood board for the blog.
It will have the colours for your blog.
Make a secret Pinterest board to pin all your favourite blog pics.
Then see what you like most about each if them.
Is it the colours?
The fonts ?
The graphics everything?
Step 2
Get a great theme
My favourite free themes are twenty sixteen , Easy Blog,Oslen.
Check out this amazing resource for free responsive themes.
Before August 2016 I had no paid theme.God had other plans .
Pat Flynn gifted his amazing ,SPI Pro theme in August to me.Life changed.
How my blog looks now with the SPI theme
While choosing a theme :
Is it for a blog ?
Or a business website
This survey says bloggers are the third most trusted source of information .We come right after friends and family .
If that’s the case we have tremendous responsibilities .
3 things which are most important for your blog theme:
#It should be simple
#It should be mobile responsive .
This can’t be ignored at any cost.
#It should work across all browsers.
Want to know more?
Be careful you remember about colour and psychology.
Women like Blue purple green.
Men like Blue Green and black
Pink is a safe colour
You are safe with blue and green it seems .
Plus these colours show authority and trust.
But when it comes to food blogs,blue is a strict no no.
Read about it here
How to Use the Psychology of Color to Increase Website Conversions
5 Cs of Blog design
- Clean
- Clear
- Capital
- Consistency
-
Color
While choosing colour we steal from interior designer tricks.After all your blog is no less than prime real estate.
The rule of 60-30-10
Primary colour 60%
It should cover most of the blog space which is visible.
Secondary colour 30% It should be creating a visually striking contrast to the primary colour.
10% is the accent colour.It’s role is to complement either of the other two.
But what if you want more colours?
.It’s your blog after all.There’s no style police around.
But the more colours you have.
The more distraction it creates from your content.
The heroine is always the content.
The rest is supporting elements.
The trick is to create a cohesive theme for your blog .
Want to define a particular area?
Use different shades of your top 3 colours.
Background dark or light ?
Try reading a blog with a dark background and light fonts .
Then one with a white background and black fonts.
The second one is easier.
The best way to make your blog float ,is to have lots of white spaces.
Avoid the long text blocks .
Break it up into readable chunks .
Read this 10 Blog design dos and don’ts
You have a theme and a colour scheme .
Now what ?
What do you need next for your brand?
Step 3
You need a favicon.
It’s that square thingy ,which shows in the browser when a website is open.
You need a favicon because it’s your brand identity .
It can also be your logo .
It should be unique to your brand.
You should have it copyright protected.
I am still confused about what I want here .So I use my face as a favicon .You can see my peeping on your browser .
That takes care of unique and copyright for now.
Tina and me are gifting our Thankful Thursday
first prize winner a custom favicon for her blog .
Your blog is your online face.People unfortunately do judge a book by its cover.
Hope these tips help you on the way to a better blog design
Takeaway
So this weekend do 3 things
Check your blog theme .
Is it ticking all the boxes.
Get your colour codes and mood board ready.
Make a custom favicon for your site.
Next week some more info to make your blog beautiful .Inside out.
Stay Thankful .Stay happy.
I am blogging daily throughout November with #NaBloPoMo
(The featured image is by Chaitra of pink pot. )
This was the featured post at Bloggers Pitstop
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Hi we are going to feature this post on the Bloggers Pit Stop on Friday. Congratulations.
Kathleen
Bloggers Pit Stop
Thanks Kathleen.I am very happy to e featured for this post at the Bloggers pit stop.
Congratulations Amrita, You won the Blogger’s Pit Stop linky party with this post.
Janice
Thank you Janice. I feel very happy to get a chance to be featured on your linky
Great tips Amrita, and your sources are amazing bloggers.
Thanks for bringing your post to last week’s Blogger’s Pit Stop.
Janice, Pit Stop Crew
Thanks Janice. Yes these bloggers are so inspiring that they make you want to do more.
Glad you liked it.
This is super useful indeed. My blog is still young so these tips will definitely help in some way. Great post!
i could not agree more having your website be responsive is so important! Also self hosting is the way to go! Favicon’s are fun and simple ways to tie your brand all over the site mine is a dollar symbol. Since I have a budgeting and finance blog. Great tips!
Thanks Nikolina.
Have to check out your blog .It sounds great.
I love what you said “your blog is your online real estate” So true! Yeah and may I add that “your blog is your own kingdom. You can be your own King or Queen!”
Absolutely true.You are the Queen of your Blog castle????
Hello Armita. Speaking of great blogs, you have one. This information is very practical and helpful as well as being broadminded. Love the lists.
Thank you so much .Glad you liked it.
Thank you so much.You are very kind.Appreciate the compliment ????
Good important tips for building a blog. And good tips to keep revisiting each year.
You’ve got really great advice here, love! I’m pretty new to the blog world again and I this really helped!
Thank you for the useful information! I know my blog needs an update!
Thank you for the tips. They were helpful. I just recently re-designed and re-branded and I used some of these ideas.
Thank you for the helpful tips, I always feel that I need to do a little refreshing on my blog every so often.
Lennae xxx
I need some more designs for layouts for Blogger.com do you recommend any for free?
I have used WordPress for ever.Have very little idea about blogger.com themes.Sorry
A lot of work goes into creating a blog. This is very helpful especially for beginners.
I felt that struggle on deciding which theme and style I have to put in my blog. After two years of blogging I decided to rebrand which is a good decision for me.
I’ll have to keep in mind the 5 Cs list. That’s very useful. Thank you for those.
I had completely forgotten how I created my first favicon and now need to two new ones for my blog. Really interesting read
Great ideas. Number one point is girls like pretty. I can’t wait to apply your tips to my own blog.
Solid comprehensive advice for newbies and pros alike! Thank you!
Omg so much valuable info here!!!! Blogging can definitely be overwhelming
This is some great infomation and tips, im just putting together a blog and website for my business so it will come in beey handy thank you 🙂
You definitely made some good points about blogging. You also helped with some great solutions!
This is funny because over the past three days I have been looking at themes and considering the changing I will soon be making to my blog. I have changed the layout mostly and kept my colours but now I need the design changed and fresh! I have taken your suggestions into consideration. I am excited to make the switch although good content is always number one on my list!
You have made very valid points AMrita. I like aesthetically beautiful blogs which are soothing to the eye – i find them user friendly too! Thanks for the mention
Thanks Tina.Love your tutorials
Ufff! this is killer stuff doc. I feel like sitting down right now to spruce up my blog again – favicon and Gravitar are same?
We all spend enough time of our blogs so we should aim to make them as aesthetic as we possibly can
Love the list! Thanks for all the tips..it’s going to be very useful for me since I’m a new blogger.
A lot of useful information here! However, I kind of got lost in the delivery. It was kind of hard for me to read/keep up!
This is all so helpful. Thank you! I always work to make my blog pretty and easily accessible.
This is a good list. Just recently had mine redone. But now it’s time to actually work on getting all my travel posts up 🙂
This is an excellent post. It’s super helpful! There is so much I would change about my blog, but whenever I try to make a change, it seems to mess up the whole thing. One day when I have more time, I’m going to really sit down and work on it.
Such great information. I really enjoy posts like this that help with blogging.
Wow!
That is so much research, simplified and condensed into one single post! It couldn’t get better than this!
Thank you for this post, I will try and follow the instructions and visit the sites mentioned to get a theme for my blog, as I have been looking for it:)
Really? Blue isn’t good for a food blog? Mine is teal! 🙁
Anyway, very informative write up. So many points to take away here.
30 recipes for NaBloPoMo at Something’s Cooking
So MANY useful information and it is very true we all love that our blog looks the best. Thanks for sharing this!
WOW! That is so much information! LOL! Its great that you’ve gathered it all into one place.
This was a really interesting post. Although I don’t change things a lot on my blog I do ad improvements little by little. Then I give myself time to think before implementing another change. I have two new small Improvements that I’m contemplating now. This post will be helpful as I decide which direction I will choose.
Yes that’s the smartest way to do it.One small change at a time.Test it.Let it be .Tweak it.Glad you shared your process.
Excellent advice. This would have been a great post for me to have last year when I began. But grateful for the learning process too.
Thanks Sheri. Glad you found it useful.
Eek, this is all seems really challenging for me. I just like doing the writing part of my job! Not the behind-the-scenes work. I actually am willing to spend money to have someone help me design the site and do the aesthetics so I can just focus on the writing! In an ideal world, I can do both things. But I just can’t unless I’m given the time!
Hi Divya yes the behind the scenes is truly cumbersome if you don’t like it.Glad you shared your feedback.
Wow Amrita..that is so much useful information in one post. Very helpful for all the bloggers like me. We all like to make our blog beautiful and stand out too but on the other hand don’t know how to do it. This is surely helpful.
Thanks Deepa .Glad you found this useful.
I will be going step by step through all that is needed for DIY bloggers.Thanks for the appreciation.