HowTo BigBlogs Behave

Smashing Magazine is still the best, this time they published another stunning posts.

There are a lot of HowTo posts that show you what is good in blogging and what is not. But which posts telling the truth ?

I don’t know, the best way to answer that question is test those tips on your own websites. Yes, but is that the only answer ?

NO, WRONG !!!

The best solution is visit Smashing Magazine and read those two posts:

A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs

A Small Study Of Big Blogs: Further Findings

So what all that excitement come from ?

Smashing Magazine team provide ‘small’ study about big blogs and how they behave, about structure, templates and all that stuff that we bloggers need to fight with.

They research show in percent what big blogs are all about, you can see what they choose and do the same if you want.

Smashing Magazine includes:

First link: A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs

1. Layout

1.1. How many columns?
1.2. Centered or left-aligned layout?
1.3. Fixed, elastic or fluid?
1.4. Width of the fixed layout?
1.5. Proportion between the content area and layout? (if fixed layout)
1.6. CSS-layout or table-based layout?

2. Typography

2.1. Dark on light or light on dark?
2.2. How many characters per line?
2.3. Primary typeface for body text?
2.4. How large is the font size of body copy? (if em then convert and round)
2.5. Primary typeface for headlines?
2.6. How large is the font size of headlines?

Concludes are:

* large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
* layouts are usually centered (94%),
* layouts usually have a fixed width (px-based) (92%),
* the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
* 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
* CSS-layouts are used (90%),
* the background is light, the body text is dark (98%),
* the most usual (not necessarily most user-friendly) line length lies between 80 and 100 characters,
* Verdana, Lucida Grande, Arial and Georgia are used for body text (90%),
* the font size of body text varies between 12 and 14px (78%),
* Arial and Georgia are used for headlines (52%),
* headlines have the font size between 17 and 25px.

Second link: A Small Study Of Big Blogs: Further Findings

3. Structure

3.1. Navigation menu: top, left or right?
3.2. How many posts on the start page?
3.3. Are related and popular posts displayed?
3.4. What information is placed in the footer?

4. Advertisements

4.1. How many ads per page?
4.2. Are ads displayed in the content area?
4.3. Where are ads placed in the layout?

5. Functionality

5.1. Are social buttons and icons used?
5.2. RSS-feeds: position and visual appearance
5.3. Tag clouds in use?
5.4. Pagination in use?
5.5. Where to place the search box?
5.6. Where to place the link to the contact page?
5.6. Are top blogs standard-conform?

Concludes are:

* 96% of top blogs are not standard-conform,
* 8% of top blogs have over 500 errors
(Ben Smith’s Blog, Neatorama, Search Engine Land),
* 28% have 200 – 499 errors,
(BoingBoing, ProBlogger, Google Blog, Engadget),
* 24% have 100 – 199 errors,
(TreeHugger, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Gigazine, TUAW),
* 22% have 50 – 99 errors,
(TechCrunch, CopyBlogger, Dooce, Ars Technica, Lifehacker),
* 10% have 1 – 49 errors,
(Kottke, GigaOM, AutoBlog, Google Blogoscoped),
* 4% have 0 errors
(e.g. A List Apart).

So I hope this two posts help you make good decision in blog planning, maybe it is time to make some changes on your existing blogs ?

Have a nice day and keep up this whole blogging hobby with me.

Hope to see some comments on this one from you.