You have a blog. Now, what about the design, or theme of your blog? It can be an daunting task…finding the theme that matches your content.
Having changed my themes (I have two blogs), at least a half dozen times, I am reverting back to KISS.
Keep It Simple, Stupid!
As I wrote in my previous article, Without________, Your Blog Is Nothing, my readers aren’t coming to my site to see if I have photos of Bald Brittany, or Google skyscraper ads. And…..my readers don’t care what the name of my blog is. As detailed in that post, there are a lot of things readers really don’t care about.
Then……think about this….if someone subscribes to your blog, or blog comments, via a (full) feed, they don’t even “see” your site (unless they choose to click on the link). They have subscribed to a blog to read what you wrote. Sad, but true, all that time you spend tweaking your theme, may be all for naught, to your RSS readers.
Hence, I have decided to KISS, with regard to both this and my Observation Mountain.com blog.
I’ve changed both of the themes, to a minimalist format, by using three column layouts, and scattering only a few ads throughout the pages.
I believe I am now giving my visitors, what they want. Good content, in a format that supports it.
Ironically, this has taken me full circle. The author of my first theme, and the author of my current themes is the great Brian Gardner. Thank you Brian, for your fabulous, classy designs.
I must say, I actually really liked the photo on Observation Mountain, because I like hiking in the West Coast. I was wondering where is the picture from? But I agree, the simpler, the better. Together with your previous article, people come to read what you say. Not for photos, or ads… As you said before, Blog is not a way to make money, so why do ads matter…
And I like your site. So clean and easy to read.
Hi Asako,
Thank you for your comment, and compliment.
The photo I previously had on http://observationmountain.com/ was part of a theme by the name of “Talian”, however, I could find no mention of where the beautiful photo was taken.
Sometime later I may add some type of mountain photo to that blog, but for now, I like you, like the simplicity of the site.