One Blog Layout Aspect You Should Never Change
“…the implications of changing your main content column width could be disasterous…”
Unless you’ve splashed out decent money for a professional blog design, the chances are you have, or you will change your theme at some stage or another, and as long as it doesn’t happen too frequently (a trap I can easily fall into), a design change can have a positive impact upon current, and new visitors.
As most of you know, I’ve just recently changed the design here, but I really hope to keep it like this for some time, except for very minor tweaks that may be necessary now and again. Changing your design too frequently can frustrate visitors very quickly. At the end of the day, 99.9% aren’t visiting to drool over your design, but to benefit from your content (which should therefore make content our #1 priority).
Allow me to cut to the chase though, as I want to warn you all that there is one aspect of your layout/design that you should never change. In fact, as soon as you begin to blog, you should make your choice and stick to it.
Quick, tell me what it is…
Put simply, never change your main content column width. This area where you’re reading this text right now should never change, even from one design to another.
But why?
Well, to be honest, the implications of changing your main content column width could be disasterous, or it might not have any impact at all. At best, it will look fine no matter what you change it to, because your posts contain no images, or ads. At worst, you’ll have to go through all your old articles and fix them, because any images you’ve used in past articles, are now either too small, or too big.
Take this blog for example. My main content width is 520px, and it always is on every blog I have. I don’t know why I decided on 520px, but I’ve used that width now for as long as I can remember. Because it never changes, the images I use in my posts never mess up, and I can use them across multiple blogs if I like, without having to resize them. If I changed the layout of this blog, and made the main content column 550px, I’d get text creeping up the side of my images, and it would just look nasty.
So, to conclude, choose a width you like, and stick to it!
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3 Responses to “One Blog Layout Aspect You Should Never Change”
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Because of you and so many others that recommend WordPress. I am starting to explore and experiment with this platform. There is a lot to learn and I am still not sure if I can pull off the technical side of having a WordPress blog. As I have commented before, you offer a lot of good advice and I am taking notes. I will let you know when I launch that first WP blog!
What part of having a WordPress blog do you think you’d have difficulty with Neena? There is a lot you can learn, I’m constantly learning, and thinking of ways to improve, but the basic needs in order to get going and keep going, are very straightforward. I’d be glad to help you in any way I can if you need it.
Neena:
I have found Wordpress to be a really easy platform for publishing my blog. I do have some technical knowledge in my background, however the tutorials on Wordpress’s main site really make things pretty easy for a first time user.
Armen:
Thanks for this great tip. At some point I am sure that I am going to mess with my Wordpress theme. I will now be very careful not to change my main content width.