For those of us who don’t have money to pay a person to customize our blog theme, one thing you might consider is to peruse the free themes available. Most of the time, you can find a theme that matches your personality and offers a few customizable additions. Just do a search for ‘wordpress themes’ and you’ll be on your way. The free themes from wordpress’ website is probably the best place to start. From there, you’ll find other people who have done some programming and are willing to share their work while others charge a modest fee. The themes with a fee usually have more intricate coding, which will give your blog more visual pizazz. So, you just have to decide whether the extra visual enhancements fir your personality or not.

This happens to be one of those days when I have nothing to offer. No nuggets of insight, no interesting story to share. Just you, me and this page. What do you think? I love the banner; it was custome designed by a friend. It perfectly summarizes what this blog is about. Blogging ideas, tips, strategies and some unassociated nonsense for fun. I enjoy just looking at the design. I’m not narcissistic enough to revel in past posts, but I do like the color scheme and layout. I find it actually soothes me. That cool greenish-blue (or bluish-green) reminds me of the ocean in the tropics, full of coral and other sea creatures. I like my blog.

Ok, one of the things I’ve picked up in learning how to blog is to offer different reading experiences. I want to offer one of those new experiences with an open survey. Here’s the survey question: When you visit a blog, what have been some of the biggest distractions? No need to include specific examples in your comment, but be as descriptive as possible so the rest of us can understand what you saw and experienced.

This bit of advice comes from Edward Khoo and is something that not only applies to websites and blogs but to life in general. That is the area of criticism. It’s inevitable; at some point someone is goign to come along and not like ar understand 100% what you’re trying to accomplish via your online endeavor. As a result, they will offer their opinion on what you should do. Now, before mentioning a few of Mr. Khoo’s ideas, I have a couple of my own. First, you have to realize that criticism can be a wonerful when offered by the right person, and it can also have the potential to be downright mean coming from the wrong person. The right person’s comments can make you better if you’re willing to take what they say and objectively see the pros and cons. The wrong person’s comment can be beneficial is terms of giving you an opportunity to turn the other cheek. My dad used to say that opinions are like rear ends: everyone has one and they all stink. While I’ve come to adopt that philosophy to only a few opinions, I still listen to others when they have an issue with something I do. Read what Mr. Khoo has to say here.

Well, it depends on where you live and who lives near you. Some have asked me where they can get a blog design similar to mine, and what I’ve said is this. When it came time to develop this blog, I went to my wife who designs websites for a living. I asked her if she would be willing to help me out with this and she came up with a wonderful design. Now, if you’re not lucky to have a spouse that already does this, don’t worry. There are people who design blogs as well as web sites. I have a friend who did a search for “orange county web designer” because he wanted to find someone nearby in California and found someone to meet his needs. That’s really all you have to do. Do a search for web design or blog design in your geographical location and you should receive a few names for consideration. Even then, some of the best people are living next door. So, don’t be afraid to talk to people in the real world. You might find your diamond designer in the rough talking to the grocery checkout girl.

While content is vital to the life of your blog, if your blog’s design is too confusing, you’ll end up losing readers. The folks over at hongkiat.com compiled 100 blog designs that are not only simple but beautiful as well. If you use one of these designs as the basis for your blog, you should only have to worry about creating good content.

This is probably a repeat in terms of blogging advice, but it bears repeating.  Keep your blog design simple. Make sure people can find your content as well as your archives.  If you look at this blog, you’ll notice that everything is pretty clearly labeled.  You know where my content is as well as any advertisements or recent posts.  I’ve gone to quite a few blogs recently and not only is the content hard to find, there are Google ads right in the middle of the post. For me, that is distracting and takes away from the aesthetic of the blog layout.  Let people do their own Google search for computer service orange county, don’t force them read your post like it has a commercial break.

If something works, stick with it. Facebook is starting to become notorious for making layout changes that make the experience a frustrating endeavor. Here’s what I mean, The previous layout had certain things in certain areas of the page. That layout lasted long enough that I and a number of FB friends got really comfortable with it. I could login, check the things I always check, and move on to my next activity. With this new layout, I spent 5-10 minutes more just trying to figure out where everything is. And a number of my friends have already posted status updates about how they hate the new look.

What’s the point of this rant? Usually, blogs don’t change format to much. You might change a graphic every once in a great while but it doesn’t change format. If you have a full blown website, here’s the lesson: if you’re going to change your site layout, don’t completely reinvent the wheel. People like consistency with a little bit of change. When you make your site almost brand new in design and layout, you’re going to make people mad. Mad people usually don’t come back to visit.

I was talking to friend of mine who does web site design in orange county about the accessibility issue I mentioned yesterday, and he sent me a link to some fun stories from the past year.  I read through them and started laughing.  There were some goofy headlines during this past year, and I wanted to share them with you.  View the funniest headlines from the past year here.

I just read a story about how big companies are looking into optimizing their site to be more accessible to those with physical handicaps. It got me to thinking about the smaller websites and blogs. There are readers everywhere and if you want to get your message out, it would behoove you to try and reach as many people as possible. Now, while you may not have the money to spend on consultants and fancy website design, you can enact some changes to help potential readers access your site. Start small, but at least start.