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15 Jan 10 How to Decide Which Blog Theme to Use

Let’s say Jane searched for something in Google and end-up coming to your blog. Guess what she sees at first?

Your crafty headlines? Your cleverly written articles? Your creative site description? Well, none of these. The first thing she will experience will be the look and feel of your blog. The design part, that is why, design of a blog is so important. Let me put it this way:

If content is the king, design [of a website] is the court of the king.”

It is thus important to decorate the court for the king to shine in all its glory. But the question is how to decide which blog theme to use? I am going to give you some advice that will help you decide on the blog theme for your blog. Answer the following questions before you decide on the blog theme:

  1. Subject matter of your blog? What is it about?
  2. What will be the layout? Will it be magazine style with multiple categories? Or will it be normal 2 or 3 column layout?
  3. How many ads do you want to place in your blog?
  4. What kind of theme is used by the top 3 blogs in your or related niche?
  5. How much breathing space (white space) is there around content, and between content and side bar?
  6. Is the blog looking cluttered or is it clutter-free? You will not like to have visually heavy design.
  7. Is it optimized for search engines?
  8. What about W3C validation of the codes?
  9. What is the color theme of the blog? Will it work for your niche? You should know that not all color scheme works with all the niches.
  10. Can it be customized, if need be?

Answers to these questions will give you an idea about your needs vis-à-vis blog themes available in the market. Choose the one that provides favorable answers to maximum number of questions listed above.

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01 Oct 09 Design a Mono-Syllabic Homepage

Google was probably the first clutter-free web site that made so much news. There were quite a few such web sites, which is long gone and forgotten.

If this is so then why am I talking about it now?

Well, the reason behind my digging this old grave is to tell you about the new exciting discovery that many websites are embracing, and that development is the movement towards a clutter-free or mono-syllabic homepage, as I call it. Mono-syllabic because these homepage have just one purpose.

This kind of homepage is not everything to everyone. It is just one thing; like Google that always has search only on the home page, and its home page still says the same. It never was yahoo, a search engine with divided focus.

Indeed, Google has small links to all other services, but let me tell you that those links are completely unobtrusive. Following the Google’s lead rediff.com has also adopted mono-syllabic homepage, in recent months. Ask.com is another famous website that usage mono-syllabic homepage.

There are many new search engines of all hue and sizes that are following Google’s lead and are removing clutter from their homepages. This is a drive towards making the web clutter free. This, indeed, is important, but how to decide what to keep on this mono-syllabic homepage?

The answer to this question lies in the mission statement of your website, and the expectation of your visitors.  Ask the following question, in answer to which, you will get your mono-syllabic homepage:

What is that one reason that justifies your existence?

What this world will lose, if your website is pulled down?

Suppose, you have to remove everything from the website, and forced to keep just one then what is that one thing for which you visitors will come to your website?

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26 Sep 09 Here’s a Quick Way to Find a Perfect Web Host

You got a cool website name, a trendy design, and the best in the class content, and even lots of traffic, but still you will not be successful if you do not have a good web host to host your website. How good is your design if your server is down most of the time? And how good is your content if your website takes years to load? Nothing matters, if your hosting is not right. It is like, having everything fancy in place, but what is missing is the infrastructure.

Your webhost provides you the infrastructure to erect your online empire; therefore, it is very necessary to find the right web hosting company to host your domain. Here I am going to share some tips that will help you in finding a good webhosting company.

Web hosting quality checklist

These are steps I followed when I chose a web hosting company for my blogs. Follow these ten steps and see if the host you are considering meets all of these criteria or not.

  1. Bandwidth: The more bandwidth you will get the more users you can entertain.
  2. Storage space: If you want to host a lot of website, or host heavy files then you will need a lot of space.
  3. Speedy technical support: You will not like to wait for days before you get your answer like the grand daddies of web hosting make you do.
  4. Easy to use control panel: managing domain should be easy.
  5. Seamless upgrading and downgrading: your web host should help you seamlessly upgrade or downgrade your account without any downtime.
  6. Free e-mail hosting: you will like to have yourname@yourdomain.com; hence make sure your hosting plan allow you to have many e-mail accounts.
  7. Unlimited domain hosting: see if your web hosting company gives you the opportunity to host more than one website or not.
  8. Good infrastructure: See if your web hosting company has up-to-date servers or not. And what about their backup servers?
  9. Uptime: the web hosting that you choose should guarantee at least 99.99% uptime.
  10. One-click software installation: your web host should have one-click installation for WordPRess, Drupal, Joomla, osCommerce, ZenCart, and other common softwares.

Recommendation

At this point, I will say this: if you are looking for a reliable web hosting company that offers Unlimited disk space, bandwidth and e-mail account at an affordable price then you should check Gossimer Unlimited webhosting plan. It is worth a look.

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