CodeProfessor

Revamping Blog Information Design And Layout August 20, 2006

Chris Pearson has recently talked about how the information architecture of blogs is lacking because of the reverse chronological view of posts. This tends to limit the experience of visitors, especially if they have come to your site from its web feed subscription. He suggests that bloggers should consider other blog architectures, to present posts in some other manner than just reverse chronological.

One particular suggestion of Chris’ stuck with me, because it reflects what I, as a former print magazine publisher, would like to do with some of my blogs: highlight my best work, not necessarily my most recent articles. Alternately, an area emphasizing several recent posts prominently, could be followed vertically by the typical reverse chronological blog format.

Fortunately, a number of blogging platforms are robust enough to be treated as near-full fledged CMSes (Content Management Systems). One such platform is Wordpress. (You can actually pull off what I’m covering below on Blogger, but I’m not sure about other platforms, especially other free platforms.) You actually have a fair bit of flexibility in Wordpress on how you present your content. Basically, any content you have stored in your blog database can be presented in practically any way you want.

I’ve been thinking along Chris’ line of thought for quite some time now, and have filled up two small sketchbooks with theme designs that give blogs more of a magazine feel. But sketching layouts and actually implementing them are two different things. It requires a fair bit of coding effort, and then there’s still the issue of certain browsers (*cough* IE *cough) not yet supporting some of the most basic of CSS (Cascading StyleSheet) features. I gave up nearly before I started.

Fortunately, if you favour the idea of emphasizing the most important recent articles, like a print magazine, you can read Max Limpag’s post on how to use Wordpress like a magazine. The necessary PHP code is there, and Max even offers a free open source theme, Nautica-magazine, optimized for the purpose. The primary point of information architecture that Max is using is to give each Wordpress post category its own section. Here’s a very attractive example site, which he worked on, using such a layout. There are similar examples linked to from his article. While you’re on his site, also check out his repository of valuable Wordpress code snippets.

That said, the themes on my own blogs are long due for an overhaul. Funny thing is, I want to go back to my original design for my hubsite, Chameleon Integration. It’s five columns, has a main banner, and a minimum of colours that match my custom-designed logo. Though achieving the three middle columns in Wordpress using PHP and CSS just isn’t going to be easy without using tables - something quite a few CSS purists would freak about. But having spent a good portion of my career as a consultant, it’s getting the job done that’s more important. I’ve wasted nearly 10 months trying to come up with a tableless CSS version of my original design, and I doubt it’ll happen with CSS 2.0. So watch for a slow overhaul on my sites. And feel free to comment.