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Blogger Unleashed

As promised I have reopened and taken Blogging For Noobs off the market  after it sitting for sell for some time.  One of our new weekly features is a featured blog.  This week is Blogger Unleashed.  (Warning: if you think any of my blogs use strong language, Vic might be too much for you)

The first thing you will notice on the homepage is the big fat logo image and his featured article.  Also in the opening screen is a box with a bunch of ways to subscribe to his blog.  The last thing you are going to notice when you load up, if you notice it at all depending on your screen resolution is the advertising is all located on the right hand side of the screen.

Here are the things I think work on in the opening screen.  There is instant navigation links at the top of the page.  This lets me quickly skip the home page since I have seen it plenty of times.  The logo has a message and his catch phrase.  You instantly know what the blog is about.  The subscribe to links make it easy for you to get to the meat of the blog on your own terms.  The last thing we see in the opening shot is a featured post which has a video.  This is what Vic sees as some of his most important information, so it gets a prime spot.  The only thing I find that doesn’t work for me, can’t be seen directly.  I looked at the page source and didn’t care for the extensive use of tables.  It has worked for him so far, so all I can say is it is a pet peeve and my problem not his.

Let’s take a look at one of his posts now.  You find the same header information you did on the home page.  All the extraneous information is on the right hand side of the blog while the post takes up a little less than half the page width.  The text itself is broken with graphic elements, which in this case happen to be advertising.  You also find he has bold faced the important keywords of the post.  After the text you get a good list of related posts and then the comments.

Here is where I think the posts go right.  The keywords are bolded for SEO purposes, this is something I am slowly going back and doing myself.  He uses good density of the keywords he wants to promote. The post itself isn’t a long continuous bit of text.  (short posts without breaks are okay, long ones are hard to read)  The post column is also thin enough that it doesn’t strain the eyes moving all over the page.  Once again all the extraneous information is on the right side of the page not interfering with the reading. The second place the post goes right is the inclusion of related posts.  This helps draw readers further into your site.

In the end not only are you going to learn a lot about what does and doesn’t work on a blog by reading it, you can quite easily figure out the best ways to lay your blog out by studying the design of successful blogs.  Vic uses strong language, but fuck it so do I, and so do most people if they are honest enough to admit it.  His blog is still top notch and well worth reading even if you are easily offended.  I’ll go so far as to say especially if you are easily offended, being outside your comfort zone is the best way for you to learn anything.  Keep up the great work Vic.