31 Days to Building a Better Blog—Day 10
Jul 24th, 2008 by Nut
Day 10 of Building a Better Blog is here. We’re almost halfway there and today’s tip is to Declutter Your Sidebar. Clutter can accumulate over time all over a blog, so paying attention to specific areas like the Sidebar is very helpful.
This is one of those basic blog tips that often goes overlooked because it seems so simple. And, honestly, that’s why it took me so long to get Day 11 of this project going. But really, it’s on here for a reason: it will make your blog better and easier on the eyes for your viewers.
Here are the changes I made after taking a hard look at my sidebar:
- I lessened the amount of “recent comments” that show up from ten to five. I figured this would declutter the sidebar a little bit and break up that particular section of the sidebar a little. Before that, it just kind of ran on and on.
- I changed the way the categories section shows up. I don’t know how readers feel about it, but I rarely click on this stuff on other blogs. But when I do, I haven’t seen this drop-down method. Which is fine because I think this is more efficient. Do I really need to have a static list of every single category taking up all that space? Nope. So out it went.
- I took out the Amazon widget. I had a little rectangle there that kind of added some color to the sidebar and broke up all the text. But it didn’t really fit there, and now that I changed the categories it’s not really needed.
What do you think of these changes? Does the sidebar work this way? Do you see any other changes that look off/odd?
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