I may not be an expert on blogging, but I do know a thing or two about what makes a blog pretty. It annoys me so much to see a blog with fantastic content, but an awful design--most people won't give your words a chance if your layout isn't aesthetically pleasing! It's sad, but true. Here's how you can easily make your blog prettier without buying a whole new design.
1. Make all your photos the width of your text column. This isn't hard. Use high-quality pictures when possible and resize them in Photoshop or at Picmonkey (free/no registration). This goes miles to make your blog look more professional, and it's super easy! This also applies to your widget. You can alternate sizes but make sure your edges aren't jarring.
2. Please clean up your sidebar. You don't need to have a widget for everything, you just don't. A bio, categories and ads (if applicable) should be your basics and you probably don't need much more.
3. A note about backgrounds and fonts. Please make your background, or at least the part behind the words white. Make your words black or very dark. Please don't use cursive. That's so not okay. Also, don't make big blobby chunks of words; no one wants to read that. Tough love, you don't want your blog to read like a textbook. As a rule of thumb, keep paragraphs to six lines or under.
4. Make your social media buttons match your color scheme. Well first off, have a color scheme. If you don't know how to make social media buttons, have any designer make them, I guarantee they'll be under ten dollars. I'll make them for a buck each. (design) The ones with the brand colors are just not pretty and aren't doing you any good at making your blog look put together. It's the honest truth.
What do you think keeps a blog looking clean and pretty?
1. Make all your photos the width of your text column. This isn't hard. Use high-quality pictures when possible and resize them in Photoshop or at Picmonkey (free/no registration). This goes miles to make your blog look more professional, and it's super easy! This also applies to your widget. You can alternate sizes but make sure your edges aren't jarring.
2. Please clean up your sidebar. You don't need to have a widget for everything, you just don't. A bio, categories and ads (if applicable) should be your basics and you probably don't need much more.
3. A note about backgrounds and fonts. Please make your background, or at least the part behind the words white. Make your words black or very dark. Please don't use cursive. That's so not okay. Also, don't make big blobby chunks of words; no one wants to read that. Tough love, you don't want your blog to read like a textbook. As a rule of thumb, keep paragraphs to six lines or under.
4. Make your social media buttons match your color scheme. Well first off, have a color scheme. If you don't know how to make social media buttons, have any designer make them, I guarantee they'll be under ten dollars. I'll make them for a buck each. (design) The ones with the brand colors are just not pretty and aren't doing you any good at making your blog look put together. It's the honest truth.
What do you think keeps a blog looking clean and pretty?
Some great tips! Can you make me social media buttons for the bottom of my posts? How much would it be with install? :)
ReplyDeleteYou've come over to the commenting dark side girl..! Glad you've joined us. It's so much easier!
ReplyDeleteAmazing advice and so glad I had you to help me with my blog design!!!!
ReplyDelete-Caitlyn ~ chemgradboom
She did an amazing job on mine! It is so worth it!!!
ReplyDelete-Caitlyn ~ChemGradBoom
This should be forwarded it to every blogger. ever.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anytime, friend!
ReplyDeleteIt so is! I'm loving it already!
ReplyDeleteCaitlyn, you're my favorite. Oh and you too Kayli. And I DMed you!
ReplyDeleteFeel free to tweet it/facebook it/ social media it to the world! I'm glad you found it helpful!
ReplyDeleteOh I love this! It's the simple things that make a blog look good :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tips! You are the bestest :D How is your first week of school going??
ReplyDeleteGreat tips! A good looking blog is important. I like a simple look, one popping colour and black and white to keep it simple and clean
ReplyDeleteGreat so far! And I'm still living! Thanks for asking and I'm glad the tips could help.
ReplyDeleteI think so too! You don't have to hire a designer to do things like this and they make a big difference!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! Clearly that's what I prefer, but really bright colors can work just as well as long as they work together.
ReplyDeleteThese are great tips, Allie. Anyone can implement these on their websites and quickly see what a huge difference it makes for readers/visitors. If you expand on these in the future or have a second set of tips, maybe a before/after example would be a good thing to really show readers what an impact little details make! :)
ReplyDeleteFabulous tips, Allie! I've been working on cleaning up my blog and I think the thing that made the most immediate difference was making all my photos the same size. Uniformity is pleasing to the eye :) Loved your sponsor spotlight on Amanda K :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion! I'd love to do a second part of this!
ReplyDeleteIt's so underestimated but it really does! I hate it when blogs have them all random looking.
ReplyDeleteHa, I just found your blog through The Whale & Wasp, and my first thought was how pretty and clean your site looked. Awesome advice, for sure. My sidebars do look pretty disastrous most of the time.
ReplyDeleteWell it's easy to let that happen! I used to have my goodreads shelf and my twitter feed and facebook feed but that's not all necessary! For you, some (mostly unsolicited) advice, maybe you could make a separate page for your popular posts? Otherwise, I think your blog looks really great! I love the colors and pattern in your header.
ReplyDeleteYou have one of the prettiest blogs I've ever seen. I love your header :)
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! That is so nice of you :)
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea! Definitely gonna set aside some time and do that. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNice tips, I am always think to make my sidebar smaller, but at the moment I am not sure what I really want to delet, I need to make up my mind about that o.O
ReplyDeleteThanks!
If you leave your URL, I can give it a looksee! Oftentimes, you can move things to your about page or make a whole new page for them. Or at least display them in a more aesthetically pleasing way.
ReplyDeleteOk thank you, I already have some ideas but I will see when I manage to change some things, but thanks for your help and ideas anyways: www.herewildlife.net :)
ReplyDeleteFor one, I would highly recommend only having one sidebar. You can take off the translator; non-English speakers usually have a translator built into their browsers. If possible, take out the AdChoices (unless it's actually benefitting you monetarily). And then this is up to you, but I'd suggest taking out the tag cloud and using categories instead. If there's less to look through it's more likely that people will use them. And then combine everything else into one column. (Just my tips!)
ReplyDeletethese are all great tips, i DEFINITELY have a lot of work to do in this department...
ReplyDeleteWell I'm always happy to give you a little looksee and some thoughts or do any design you need! (:
ReplyDeleteSo I just changed my template completely now and I am quite happy about it ;) Thanks, just the tag cloude... I like it too much, hehe! A few little changes I want to do (like making or finding better and prettier social media buttons^^) but later!^^
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to make you social media buttons (design tab)! Oh and the cloud looks fine once everything else is a little tidier! Your sidebar is so much easier on the eyes now, well done! I think only having one makes a huge difference. Beautiful!
ReplyDeletei would really appreciate that, i know its kind of a train wreck, i just dont know where i should start.
ReplyDeleteI just sent you like 25 twitter DMs :)
ReplyDelete1) I recently wrote a post (Free Social Media Buttons) that tells a little about installation.
ReplyDelete2) That is a little weird. I'm not a Bloglovin' expert though but I've found that they have customer service that will email you back about a problem. They've been pretty helpful to me in the past. I hope you get it figured out!
And welcome to blogging :)