sidebars Archives - Fairy Blog Mother

Don’t get stuck in default

Posted on Wednesday 4 July 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

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When WordPress is first uploaded, either by WordPress for the .com version, or by you for a .org blog, you will be issued with the default theme.

This is generally the Twenty Ten theme, which actually is a very good basic theme to start with, as it has many adaptable features to make it look better.

It has a nice big banner, to which you can easily upload one with your corporate design, with a navigation bar under it, a single sidebar on the right with plenty of widgets to occupy it, and plenty of space for your posts.

But the trouble is, being the default theme, leaving it unaltered does shout out that you don’t know what you’re doing with your blog.

And since blog design is important if you want to give a good impression to your readers, and especially as it’s very easy to change your theme, it’s not a good thing to leave it in the same state as when it was created.

Here’s a blog I recently had fun changing its theme:

As it is a WordPress.com blog, I didn’t have to do much to the theme, just to add in the banner and put some widgets into the sidebar and footer space.

WordPress.com has over 120 themes available to download, and if you host your own blog with WordPress.org then there’s literally thousands! Most of them are free and very easy to upload and activate, and if you are blessed with knowing HTML and PHP, then the world is your oyster!

For WordPress.com users, just go to ‘Appearance’ in the left sidebar, and click on ‘Themes’, and wade through the examples until you find one you like. Selecting is made simpler by using the filter system. There is also a mechanism for previewing what your blog would look like before you ‘activate’ your chosen theme.

Then once in place you check what options are available to you under ‘Appearance’, such as the ‘Header’ and ‘Background’ links, and experiment to create your desired effect.

Populate your sidebars with appropriate widgets, upload a picture of yourself and add it to the ‘Gravatar’ widget to show off the blog’s author, and then get blogging!

And if you want to have me change your blog’s theme and enhance it with some well placed widgets, then you only have to ask (click on my logo to send me an email).

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Magic Moments: Restricted use of HTML

Posted on Wednesday 30 May 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

One of the differences between WordPress.com and .org is what you can or can’t do with HTML and widgets.

refers to .com blog

Widgets are small pieces of programming or applications that are designed to be placed in the sidebars. WordPress.com provides a very good selection for you to use, all perfectly satisfactory for creating a basic blog. But these do have some restrictions for what you can do with them, and placing HTML that hasn’t been approved by WordPress in the text widgets is one of them.

This has caused many disgruntled bloggers to come to me to say “it’s not working properly!” They see the wonderful results of HTML that does work on WordPress.org blogs, and when they try to produce the same results they are bitterly disappointed.

You can’t expect all the singing-and-dancing benefits from WordPress.org on your .com blog if you are not playing for it. Be grateful that you get Akismet for free, and accept that the Twitter Badges’ code cannot be placed into the text widgets and allowed to work, likewise with videos and podcasts placed inside posts (this facility has been withdrawn as a result of the most recent WordPress.com redesign).

But certain widgets have been created as compensation. It used to be almost impossible to place an image within a text widget, because it required simple HTML. Now there is an Image widget that allows you to upload the URL of a previously uploaded image from the media gallery, and everything is done for you, including title, alt tags, caption, alignment, dimensions and a link to elsewhere, all perfect for enhancing your SEO.

There is a Facebook Like Box widget that connects with your Facebook Page and a link to the page and how many have ‘liked’ it. You have the choice of showing some examples of your fans’ avatars, your profile stream or your Page’s wall activity.

The Follow Blog widget allows your readers to subscribe to your latest posts, instead of having to create a Feedburner RSS feed and placing the code in a text widget (although this HTML is generally allowed). You can change the wording and call to action within the sign up box without having to worry about HTML.

And even if you can’t place a Twitter Badge on your WordPress.com blog, the Twitter widget that displays your latest tweets is a very good substitute, accompanied by a good choice of beneficial add-ons.

I’m amazed at what you can do to optimise your WordPress.com blog. But – if you still hanker after all the other gimzos that you see on other blogs, then you will have to take the leap and transfer your posts and pages onto a WordPress.org blog, and then the world will be your oyster!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon

Sidebar imagery sets blogs apart

Posted on Thursday 8 September 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

There is a design agency I keep an eye on. I like them because they are distinctly visual (I suppose design agencies are supposed to be), but it is the myriad of colours and the way they use images that attracts my attention.

This is not confined to just their graphics on paper, but online too. Their style is distinctive, and may not suit everybody, but simplicity combined with complexity is tastefully intertwined, and they have found a way to put this concept onto their websites and blogs they also design for.

If you are into NLP, you will know that people understand and process things in different ways. Some respond visually, others to words and the rest to sounds. A blog can use all these to put its messages across. By using all of these media, there is a better chance of capturing the attention of more potential followers and customers.

A WordPress.org blogsite allows you to do virtually anything you like on your sidebars. You could go down the usual route and add in conventional widgets which are mainly text-based, or you could go out on a limb and create linked images. This is particularly apt if your main subject lends itself to a visual presence, and each image is specifically designed to look ‘clickable’ (three-dimensional, enticing and understandable), so your visitors could end up have far more fun exploring your site than an ordinary blog. After all, isn’t that what you want them to do?

Having images on your sidebars linking to various areas of your website should be in addition to the navigation bar, because there will always be people who prefer using that method to enter a site (reference NLP) and won’t understand the concept of clickable pictures. Don’t discriminate people who are wired differently from you, they all have to be accommodated if you are going to make your website succeed.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

My blogging design dilemma

Posted on Friday 18 March 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

In case you haven’t realised it, this theme has been doctored by me. It was originally a horrible pink (and the one I used before this was a hideous green), which certainly would not have done for a purple lady like me!

refers to WP.org

So I learned how to change the code (CSS) to the colour I liked. At first it was difficult, took ages and I made many mistakes, but I learned a lot and now I can change a theme to almost anything I like, even its dimensions and other juicy bits, and add on my graphics to make the theme my own. Also I can make changes whenever I want to (watch out, I’ve plenty of ideas for the future)!

Of course it helps to have a good base to start from, as so many themes out there on offer are certainly not to my taste, or don’t contain the attributes I deem necessary for a blog. So I look for a decent banner, well placed sidebars, copious body, simple navigation and as plain a background as possible.

One of the things I love doing is changing the theme of other blogs (check out what I did for Tom Pick)! It is so satisfying to make a good job out of a bad one, and this delight also extends to adapting a basic design into something the other person desires, expects or looks for. This is what I do for my boss when I design WordPress blogsites for her clients: I have chosen four basic blogging themes which I can change to almost anything the client wants.

But why do I have a dilemma? This is because I have been introduced to some WordPress themes that allow anybody to change them to whatever they want, without having to understand HTML, CSS or whatever. OK, you have to pay for them, but that also would be the case if you got me to redesign your theme, and it might even work out less expensive.

These themes have been cleverly developed so that all the blogger has to do is to select a basic layout, click on some buttons to activate changes, add in colour hexcodes for beautification, drag and drop attributes into an appropriate position, and experiment with lots of specially created gadgets and widgets to get the effect they want. A perfect system for geeks and non-techies alike.

But would you get that personal touch? Would it involve specially designed imagery that makes all the difference? Would your new theme stand out above your competitors or set you apart from all the other blogs out there? How important is it for you to have something truly you could call your own?

Really I shouldn’t be pressurised by this competition, because the people who would go for these themes prefer uniformity, rigidity and a sense of sameness, and perhaps like controlling something for themselves, rather than getting their theme redone for them, valuing design, individuality and a sense of something special.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Which is better, left or right?

Posted on Monday 17 January 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I spent most of last Saturday messing about with a new theme for this blog. I wanted to see what it would be like to have the two sidebars on the left rather than on the right.

So I found a suitable theme (there aren’t many around with two left-hand sidebars) and set to work to change it to suit what I wanted. The original was far too thin, with narrow sidebars and an extremely deep banner, not to mention red rather than purple (a mere discrepancy easily overcome). I even redesigned my promotional squares to fit into the most left sidebar and was prepared to rearrange the widgets to fit.

But when I ‘previewed’ the new theme after I had loaded it up into FileZilla, I was disappointed. To me it seemed all wrong for a blog to have its sidebars in the most prominent position, with the posts placed secondary. The posts are the blog, so they should take centre stage, as these are the main thing people want to see and read. They shouldn’t be distracted by the sidebars, even if they are stuffed full of interesting and relevant content (as mine usually are).

So let’s take a look. The first picture is the theme I have at present (January 2011) with the sidebars on the right:

And below it is the alternative theme with its left sidebars:

Looking at it now I could easily reduce the depth of the banner and even swap over the image and words to reflect the repositioning of the sidebars, but I’m still not sure whether that would make it better.

The reason for my dilemma is that blogging gurus declare how much more appropriate it is to have your sidebars on the left, especially if they contain call to actions such as subscription sign up forms and links to relevant information elsewhere (both inside the site or externally).

If your blog, website or blogsite has been created purely as a medium to promote the content of your sidebars, then yes I would agree. But an ordinary blog should concentrate solely on its posts, as that is what blogging is all about, communicating the written word to its audience without distractions and superfluous material getting in the way.

What do you think about this? Let me know through the comment box below –

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Why images enhance blog design

Posted on Thursday 21 October 2010 by Alice • 2 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

For me, a blog’s design is enhanced by images. It is the quality and the positioning of these images that defines its individuality, presentation and personality. I am very keen to use imagery within my blog design, but the problem is they cannot be changed instantly or by my clients.

If a certain image needs to be adapted, I will gladly do it, as I have the required software to accomplish this. I actively encourage my clients to amend and publish their own content (particularly the blog post page), as WordPress is so easy to use, but they forget that images are static and cannot be changed by themselves through programming or CMS. I do not consider this a defect; if I left my clients to their own devices these carefully crafted images would soon start to look unrecognisable…

In my eyes, a blog without images is just plain boring. You need words to satisfy those who aren’t visually inclined, but I think enhancement via images is just as important as relevant and scintillating content. They can compliment each other too, and add to the explanation factor, another side to the argument, an alternative point of view.

Of course, the most obvious place for an image is the banner across the top (that is, if your theme allows this), but failing that, a simple picture of the author in the sidebar is better than nothing – at least the readers will have someone to focus on when they read the posts, as matching up the writing style with the mug-shot is always interesting.

And the remainder of the images? There’s the sidebars, empty spaces often misunderstood and neglected, which could be cluttered up with widgets, feeds and other links, or could be entertainingly stuffed full of relevant images linking to social networking profiles, other pages within the blog, and external resources relevant to the blog’s content.

So, when I’ve got time, I’ll be rethinking about my sidebars and how I can create a myriad of images to increase the entertainment value of this blog… wait and see!

Filed Under: design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

What do widgets do on your blog?

Posted on Thursday 14 January 2010 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I’ve just uploaded my free e-course ‘What and how to use widgets’ which explains what widgets are, what they are for and how to put them on your blog.

So what are widgets? Well, look at your sidebar and see all the various elements that are situated there. These are widgets, individual applications or programme processes that allow you to put up a picture, add in a subscription form, show which pages and posts I have written, list my comments, show feeds to my social media and many other things.

Both kinds of blog

Usually you mention the word ‘widget’ and the uninitiated will wince and look worried, but really it is very easy to cope with widgets once you understand them, and that is exactly what my free widget e-course does.

I have seen many blogs, not even new ones, who have not fully taken on what their widgets can do for them. To me, to see an unpopulated sidebar missing vital elements that enhance a blog as regards search engine optimisation (SEO), allowing readers to find past posts and participate in comments, even to realise there are other pages to be read, is a wasted opportunity.

The widgets that are really needed are:

a method for your reader to subscribe to your blog (either a sign up form for emails or chicklit logo to subscribe to a Google reader)
show which posts you have written recently
show the comments people have left
show your categories (topics)
show your tags (keywords)
show your links to other websites or blogs you recommend reading
how to access your blog

And then there are widgets to make your blog more usable for both your readers and the search engine spiders:

access to other pages
links to your social media profiles
RSS feeds to your Twitter stream, other blogs, delicious or other social networks
see who has visited recently
pictures, either on their own or as links to elsewhere
archive details
search mechanisms

If you have a WordPress.com blog, widgets are already available to you (dependent upon which theme you have chosen). If you’ve used WordPress.org to create your blog then some widgets will need to be added via plug-ins, of which there are many thousands to choose from, including the option to retweet posts you want to recommend and share the post with other social networking sites.

Find out how to add widgets to your blog, or just brush up on the ones you haven’t used yet – the widget world is really worth exploring!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs

Tag Archives: sidebars

Don’t get stuck in default

Magic Moments: Restricted use of HTML

Sidebar imagery sets blogs apart

My blogging design dilemma

Which is better, left or right?

Why images enhance blog design

What do widgets do on your blog?