I broke down my blog’s layout so I could “visually” and systematically start to redesign the site. I’ve got a total of 5 sections to redesign. Some sections need more work than others, but for starters I’m taking on the prime real estate section for a blog: the sidebar.

I’m starting my redesign with the sidebars because, of all the places on your blog, the sidebars provide the most flexibility for personalization. Surf around to different blogs and you’ll probably see everyone doing something a little different in this space. Personally I believe the first purpose of the sidebar is navigation. Therefore, I’m going to take sidebar #1 and add following sections:

• Pages: Ultimately, I’m going to remove the menu bar under my header. Currently that is where the links to my static pages get displayed. That information gets moved to the sidebar because access to static pages on the site ties into navigation (in my opinion).
• Popular Posts: I plan to install the Popularity Contest plugin from Alex King or something similar to create this section in the sidebar. I’ve seen this type of section on other sites and have always liked it and found it a beneficial type of navigation when I find a new blog.
• Categories: This section is fairly standard for most blogs and a sensible way to navigate the content.
• Monthly Archives: Another standard blog section that provides simple navigation. Not as important, or as useful, as the other navigation sections and therefore I’ll place it at the bottom of the sidebar.

Adding these sections means I’m also removing a few sections. Here’s what’s going to disappear and why:

• Recent Posts: I’m taking this off the main blog page because all of the recent posts already appear top down on this page. I do plan, however, to add this section back to the single post page in case someone finds this site from a link to a single post. I want to make it easy for visitors to quickly see the newest content in case their first impression of my site is a post that’s several weeks old.
• Recent comments: I’m making a personal judgment call on this removal. I don’t believe readers look at this type of section — ever. Comments are something people read when they finish reading a post, and only if they are truly interested in the topic. I highly doubt people ever arrive at a site and look at a category displaying the latest comments. People that interested in the latest comments will usually want to “subscribe to comments” for a particular post if available. Fortunately, I have already installed that type of plugin.

Okay, I’ve got to sort these sections out on my development server at home. Once I’m happy with the changes, I’ll upload them to the site. When I’ve completed my work on sidebar #1, I’ll redesign sidebar #2. Please stay tuned.

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Filed under: Blogging Related