All of your posts, settings, and every other piece of data about your blog are stored in a database. Sooner or later, you are going to have to access that database directly, especially when things go wrong.

Thankfully, the level of knowledge a blogger needs to have about their database is very low. It’s easy to get to grips with, and you’ll be glad of it when that fateful day eventually comes.

I want to make Pro Blog Design better. I’m open to any suggestions you have for that, but the first step I want to take is to add more writers to the site.

I will still be writing regularly, but with others on board, it means more points of view, more topic variety, and most importantly, more frequent posting!

In What Makes a Design Good?, I talked about the technical aspects of a good design, like site and user goals, branding, and distinction.

I did not however answer the question of what makes a design look good. What makes one blog visually attractive, but makes another one ugly?

There is no mathematical solution, but there is an artsy one. A good looking design is a combination of a number of factors. If your blog succeeds in each of these areas, then the overall effect will be an appealing design.

Image by Nir Tober.

Image by Gwennie2006 We all think we know how our blogs look. We look at them everyday. We boot up our computers, fire up the browser and…

Wait. What web browser are we using? And is it even a computer?

Firefox or Internet Explorer? PC or Mac? Windows or Linux? Desktop or handheld? iPhone or PS3?

There are a lot of possibilities, but some are more important than others. This is the order that I would recommend testing them in, and how do the test.

The web is a colorful place. It’s easy to choose any color you can imagine, and put it into your design. No mixing paints, and no worrying about color-printing costs.

It’s easy to have a colorful web page, and very tempting to do so. But what is the alternative?

Monochromatic Design

Monochromatic design is design with one color. You select a single base color, and then add white and black to it to produce different shades of that color.

Your design consists solely of your monochromatic palette, and various shades of gray.

Example of a monochromatic palette, with the base color at the right and left ends of the top and bottom rows respectively:

Image by Heraklit WordPress 2.5 came out just under 2 weeks ago, and since then there have been a stream of “Reasons to Upgrade” posts. Well, what about reasons not to upgrade?

The Security Thing

Security is a good reason to upgrade, but it’s not always as good a reason as it might seem. Some blogs over-emphasize the risks of security, to get you to upgrade.

For instance, the normally excellent Weblog Tools Collection wrote about security holes due to free themes, and then said “The moral of this story is that you need to upgrade your WordPress blog now to WordPress 2.5.”

Upgrading to WordPress 2.5 will not solve exploits coming from your theme. You must resort to other measures to do that. As a respected WordPress authority, it wasn’t fair for them to imply otherwise.

 
Image by Apesara Whether you use a 3 column layout or a 2 column layout, you have to choose which side you want your content on, and which side you want your sidebar on. Left or right? Which is best?

As always, the answer is; it depends on your blog.

Why Have It On the Right?

• Western readers read left to right. When scanning a page, we will scan left to right (And top to bottom). Put your sidebar on the right, and the first thing a reader will scan over will be your content.
• Many people still use 800×600 resolution. When designing your theme, it’s tempting to work with a 1024px wide layout. The extra space is great for the majority of your users.

  However, a good few are still on 800×600 monitors, and will have an annoying horizontal scrollbar to work with. If your content is on the left, they will not have to scroll to read it. The scrollbar will only be needed to see the sidebar.