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Blog Design for Dummies
The average blogger does not typically have experience with design or coding, but that shouldn't deter them from having a professional-looking blog design. This friendly and easy-to-understand guide provides you with the tools you need to establish a creative, unique, and aesthetically memorable blog without having to learn how to code beyond some basic CSS. Whether you're looking to write for a major brand, become a brand ambassador, sell a product, acquire new clients, advocate for a cause, or simply tell a story, you'll find design tricks, helpful techniques, and invaluable advice for creating a great-looking and functional blog.Provides the tools you need to understand what makes a successful blog from a design standpoint Teaches you CSS coding that can be used to create an effective blog design that gets noticed Helps you make design decisions regarding colors, fonts, and imagery Places special emphasis on providing your readers with a site that is easy to use thanks to smart navigation Blog Design For Dummies empowers you to make smart and creative adjustments to your blog so that you can be the proud owner of an effective blog design that gets noticed!
- GenresNonfictionDesign
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
23 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 11, 2014
The book I read to research this post was Blog Design For Dummies by Melissa Culbertson which is an excellent book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com
Steve Jobs the former boss at Apple once said that good design isn't just about how something looks, it's also about how something works. If you think about something like the iphone or ipod you will see what he means. It's the same with a blog and I know a lot of my blogs have a basic design which is why I thought I'd read this. Many web designers use heat maps to help decide where everything goes on a web page. We know the average person decides within 3 seconds whether they like a website or blog. In the western world they tend to look to the left which is probably because we read from the left to the right. Therefore information like an about page secition, some featured posts, and maybe author information will tend to be on the left. A heat map is a map of where a person tends to look in the first few seconds of arriving on a page. The page has to be easy to navigate and if it is a business should have information like business address and prices displayed prominently. The colours on the site should be coordinated. There's a website called Kuler owned by Adobe that has swatches that can be imported into programs like illustrator and photoshop that help with this colour coordination. Another thing particularly with blogs is themes and if you have a wordpress blog a free one they recommend is thesis which I am considering having for my blogs on that site. There are also widgets although you do find many of these are for the self hosted version. There is also the issue of importing fonts and if you go http://typekit.com which is also owned by Adobe you can get fancy websafe fonts. Another issue is photos for which they recommend a free program called picmonkey among others. There is also dabbling in CSS & HTML which if you use Wordpress you must purchase the extended version to do. There is also a lot in this book on Blogger & Tumblr which are also very popular. It's a really good book I enjoyed reading & I learned a lot from it.
Steve Jobs the former boss at Apple once said that good design isn't just about how something looks, it's also about how something works. If you think about something like the iphone or ipod you will see what he means. It's the same with a blog and I know a lot of my blogs have a basic design which is why I thought I'd read this. Many web designers use heat maps to help decide where everything goes on a web page. We know the average person decides within 3 seconds whether they like a website or blog. In the western world they tend to look to the left which is probably because we read from the left to the right. Therefore information like an about page secition, some featured posts, and maybe author information will tend to be on the left. A heat map is a map of where a person tends to look in the first few seconds of arriving on a page. The page has to be easy to navigate and if it is a business should have information like business address and prices displayed prominently. The colours on the site should be coordinated. There's a website called Kuler owned by Adobe that has swatches that can be imported into programs like illustrator and photoshop that help with this colour coordination. Another thing particularly with blogs is themes and if you have a wordpress blog a free one they recommend is thesis which I am considering having for my blogs on that site. There are also widgets although you do find many of these are for the self hosted version. There is also the issue of importing fonts and if you go http://typekit.com which is also owned by Adobe you can get fancy websafe fonts. Another issue is photos for which they recommend a free program called picmonkey among others. There is also dabbling in CSS & HTML which if you use Wordpress you must purchase the extended version to do. There is also a lot in this book on Blogger & Tumblr which are also very popular. It's a really good book I enjoyed reading & I learned a lot from it.
August 15, 2018
Ok some good information, wish it went into a bit more depth on certain topics
September 18, 2021
Un libro muy fácil de leer y útil para los no diseñadores. Especialmente la segunda mitad del libro donde aborda temas como la agrupación de menús y la estética de los posts.
December 28, 2015
Why I Read this Book: I’ve been following Blog Clarity (formerly called Momcomm), a blog about blogging, for a while now and when I discovered that the blog author had written a book, I was intrigued. Even better, it’s a ‘for dummies’ book. So when I found out my library had a copy, I picked it up. I love learning new stuff, and learn I did.
What I Liked: I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. Was it going to be a book about coding? Was it going to cover stuff that was way over my head? Was I going to learn something, anything, from the book? While there were some sections on HTML and CSS, this is not a book dedicated to coding. The book had some stuff I already knew, or that didn’t apply to me and my needs, but it also had a lot of information that was new to me and relevant. I actually learned quite a bit. The author covered a large range of topics, such as: using images, font licenses (something I didn’t know about until recently, like within the last year), SEO, anchor text, alt attributes, and even using Google Analytics to improve your design even further. And the list goes on.
This book was full of resources. I made note of things I wanted to remember – A LOT of notes. There’s a cheat sheet, along with updates and extras, available online (links are inside the book), which are good since some of the material will eventually become outdated as technology is constantly evolving.
The author used a variety of blogs to demonstrate different design elements. I appreciate that the same blog was not used over and over again in the examples because it gave me a chance to check out all sorts of different blogs for myself to see how they do certain things in their own unique way. It was also nice that the entire book was in color, something that is not standard with the ‘for dummies’ books.
You can either read this book from beginning to end (like I did) or you can flip through and read the sections that interest you or pertain to your needs. Either way, this is a great book to have on hand to reference back to.
What I Didn’t Like: There were some things exclusively for Wordpress users, like making blog post excerpts showing up on your homepage, site maps, plugins, navigation menu, tabbed sidebar widget, and categories and subcategories. I wish there would have been more Blogger oriented material. There was also more in-depth information on Photoshop whereas GIMP was only mentioned a couple of times and was not explored in detail.
Overall Impression: All in all, Blog Design for Dummies was an informative and resourceful book. I have already incorporated a few of the things I learned from this book into my blog design and can’t wait to go through the rest of my list. I consider myself an ‘intermediate’ blogger but still found a lot of the information useful and new to me. Blog design is a never-ending excursion for me and going through this book gave me lots of ideas, even stuff outside of the aesthetics aspect. If you are new to blogging, especially if you are going to blog on the Wordpress platform, you’ll want a copy of this book on your shelf for future reference. You could get the same information using a search engine (which is what I’ve done in the past and can be time consuming) but it’s nice to have it all packaged up in one book.
What I Liked: I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. Was it going to be a book about coding? Was it going to cover stuff that was way over my head? Was I going to learn something, anything, from the book? While there were some sections on HTML and CSS, this is not a book dedicated to coding. The book had some stuff I already knew, or that didn’t apply to me and my needs, but it also had a lot of information that was new to me and relevant. I actually learned quite a bit. The author covered a large range of topics, such as: using images, font licenses (something I didn’t know about until recently, like within the last year), SEO, anchor text, alt attributes, and even using Google Analytics to improve your design even further. And the list goes on.
This book was full of resources. I made note of things I wanted to remember – A LOT of notes. There’s a cheat sheet, along with updates and extras, available online (links are inside the book), which are good since some of the material will eventually become outdated as technology is constantly evolving.
The author used a variety of blogs to demonstrate different design elements. I appreciate that the same blog was not used over and over again in the examples because it gave me a chance to check out all sorts of different blogs for myself to see how they do certain things in their own unique way. It was also nice that the entire book was in color, something that is not standard with the ‘for dummies’ books.
You can either read this book from beginning to end (like I did) or you can flip through and read the sections that interest you or pertain to your needs. Either way, this is a great book to have on hand to reference back to.
What I Didn’t Like: There were some things exclusively for Wordpress users, like making blog post excerpts showing up on your homepage, site maps, plugins, navigation menu, tabbed sidebar widget, and categories and subcategories. I wish there would have been more Blogger oriented material. There was also more in-depth information on Photoshop whereas GIMP was only mentioned a couple of times and was not explored in detail.
Overall Impression: All in all, Blog Design for Dummies was an informative and resourceful book. I have already incorporated a few of the things I learned from this book into my blog design and can’t wait to go through the rest of my list. I consider myself an ‘intermediate’ blogger but still found a lot of the information useful and new to me. Blog design is a never-ending excursion for me and going through this book gave me lots of ideas, even stuff outside of the aesthetics aspect. If you are new to blogging, especially if you are going to blog on the Wordpress platform, you’ll want a copy of this book on your shelf for future reference. You could get the same information using a search engine (which is what I’ve done in the past and can be time consuming) but it’s nice to have it all packaged up in one book.
December 18, 2015
This book was so helpful! It was like a massive to do list without the pressure to do it all at once.
I made numerous changes on my blog because of Melissa's simple instructions and well-thought-out reasons for making the changes. I still have a huge list to conquer, but bit by bit it's getting tweaked.
In the meantime, I am comfortable and confident that what I have done (based on this book) has been the right thing to do - and well worth the investment of time.
I made numerous changes on my blog because of Melissa's simple instructions and well-thought-out reasons for making the changes. I still have a huge list to conquer, but bit by bit it's getting tweaked.
In the meantime, I am comfortable and confident that what I have done (based on this book) has been the right thing to do - and well worth the investment of time.
September 25, 2013
Since I've been voraciously reading blog posts on the subject over the past several years, I was curious as to whether I would get much usable material from this read. Pleasantly. Surprised. This book helped me fill in the missing bits. More importantly for me, it helped me make connections with what I already knew.
April 12, 2014
I read this book front to back, and now I'm going through it again carefully implementing Melissa's ideas. This is a wonderful resource that bloggers will want quick access to as they work through a design themselves, or with a designer. Such great insights!
March 16, 2016
Decent review of what I already knew. She warns that it is not for programmers or designers and I should have taken heed. A simple book for newbies. That said, it's a good refresher for those who build their own sites.
August 9, 2016
The best resource out there for great blog design tips. Very easy to understand, particularly for those who aren't great at coding.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews