The Making of a Brand – 5 Design Essentials for Bloggers

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People love brands. A brand speaks to people on a higher emotional level than a product, service, or blog. You might think that having a brand is restricted to big businesses with huge marketing budgets and not necessarily appropriate for your blog. A brand, however, gives your blog a story and a soul! That means that not only will you be able to distinguish yourself clearly from other blogs, but also your audience will understand your vision and mission much more clearly. How you want to look, how you want to sound, and what and who you want to stand for – these are things that are deeply tied to your brand. [Read more…]

5 Tips to Make Sure Your Blogs Works on Every Browser

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Making sure that your blog looks and works correctly is one of the major things you need to get right. Your readers will not take it kindly if something does not work on their browser or mobile device. But how to make sure that all works correctly? Today let us take a look at the top 5 cross-browser testing tips to quickly test your blog. [Read more…]

How to Redesign Your Blog for Improved User Experience

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In blogging, there’s no such thing as permanent success. Everything comes full circle, from your content marketing, branding strategy, and web design.

It’s really simple: if you’re not adaptive to the latest trends, technology, and strategies, you get left behind.

For the past few years, the digital world shifted into a more consumer-centric path. Brands that offer the best user experience are rewarded, while those who focused on their interests suffered PR fire.

In this post, we’ll tackle the elements you need to review and redesign in your blog for the best user experience. [Read more…]

Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr Launches New Design

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Duncan Riley talks about the recent refresh of his news site The Inquisitr and it is interesting to see how he views the site more and more as a traditional news outlet. Besides the obvious visual changes and enhancements, Riley talks about the syndication deals we’ve reported on previously.

I’ve only touched on this side briefly, but we started syndicating content a couple of months back. We started with Bang Celebrity content, and started playing with AHN. As of two weeks ago we expanded our AHN deal so we take on much more of their content now. We don’t post all of it, and we’re trying to work around content that might be interesting. At the same time though, the mere fact that we’re syndicating content makes us more traditional news site every day; both deals are like signing on with AP or Reuters to a degree, and I’d hope it’s the start of something better again for us.

Be sure to read his post on the fourth Inquisitr refresh, and check out the new look. It is a step in the right direction says the designer in me…

Vote App Lets Facebook Users Express Their Outrage

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I’m not the right person to judge the new Facebook design because I find the social network utterly boring, and the only reason I even reactivated my account was to get in touch with people addicted to the service. I will say that the previous design was cluttered, while this one is nicer on the eye. That is, however, not the most important thing when it comes to app-like services and sites like Facebook, and a lot of users dislike the new design.

A new Facebook application, called New Layout Vote, lets you vote on the new design. These are disheartening numbers for Zuckerberg & Co., because as of now, some 900,911 users have voted and the score is a whopping 94% against the new design. As in don’t like it. The app will break 1 million in a few hours time, if the increase in votes right now is anything to go by.

More on Techmeme, of course.

So what do you think about the (fairly) new Facebook design?

Movable Type Monday: TypePad Connect, vpod.tv, Layout Switching, and More

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Happy Monday, folks! The biggest Movable Type-related news this week was the release of TypePad Connect, a service from Six Apart that combines a Disqus-style comment system with MyBlogLog-like profiles. TypePad profiles extend the existing TypeKey service and allow you to connect it with your other social networking sites, turning it into a lifestream of sorts. TypePad comments supports OpenID login and has TypePad anti-spam built in. TypePad Connect will integrate with any MT blog, and it works with other blogging systems as well. More features are on the way, including the ability to import comments into your existing comment system.

I’ll admit, I’ve never personally seen a need for a hosted commenting system like this, but Disqus has become quite popular, and now 6A is entering the market. Have you had any experience with one of these systems? Let us know in the comments.

Plugins

vpod.tv — Six Apart Europe announced the release of a plugin that integrates vpod.tv into your MT blog. With this plugin you can upload video to your site and have it published on vpod.tv. The press release makes it sound like it should be available now, but I haven’t found it available for download anywhere. [Read more…]

Blog Navigation Innovations

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Innovations in blog design are now pretty few and far between. Blog design has pretty much settled into conventions that work. It’s one of the reasons I can be so happy with settling on just the Thesis WordPress theme and why I love it so much.

Every now and then though someone still manages to come out with a tweak or idea that makes me smile. [Read more…]