Once upon a time in World Wide Web a private and personal diary, where recording daily activities and reflections, called Weblog. It was a website, an on-line publication, very useful to spread personal content for a close audience. By PVMGarage.com

Nowadays a blog is a particular genre of website with features and elements that allow a complete and well-constructed publication of articles on the Web. There are many different types of blogs with different characteristics, from the personal blog to the corporate blog, from the monothematic blog to the blog-magazine. They are different not only in the topics and in the type of content, but above all in the way in which they deliver articles and information.

Each blog is part of a big and working ecosystem, the Blogosphere; understanding the connections among the elements of this system, it’s possible to build a good presence on-line in order to improve our activities or our business.

It’s ridicolous, now, to define a blog like a simple and personal diary (sure, it might be also a diary on-line), because a serious, well-done and updated blog is a valid source of information in any field.
If you have to share fresh and good contents with a community, the blog surely is an opportune way to do that; and if you want to get benefits from blogging, trust me, you should have an unique and distinctive blog design.
Below we will take a look at some crucial points on which we should make some considerations designing a blog, starting from an overview on the typical elements of a weblog.

Elements And Components Of The Classic Blog

In many cases it’s a good thing create a simple scheme that synthesizes the most important parts of our project and, designing a blog, we may start from the typical layout for this type of website. The weblogs, historically, tend to follow a simple two-columns scheme: header, main content, sidebar and footer.

Many blogs use also a three-columns layout with a double sidebar, this solution is used when there is a lot of information to show.

The blocks, that we’ve just seen, are the container for articles, links and other stuff that the blogger wants to share with his readers. A working blog should display to the users all elements, useful to learn more about the topics and the minds behind the website, in the best-possible place. I think that only the experience of the designer/blogger and the study of the decisions taken by famous blogs in the years can provide valid information on how to design and “fill” the blocks. However I’ll try to bring out a list of most used items for each block.

Header

The header is the top of the page where, generally, the designers love placing a nice logo and the primary navigation menu. Sometimes in this part there is the space to display, in creative way, links and clickable icons to subscribe the RSS of the blogs or to follow the updates on Twitter (or other social networking websites). Besides highly-skilled designers love creating nice, artistic headers to engage the visitors. Designing your header you may consider to add some of the following elements:

Logo: a well-designed and clever logo is essential for a website, generally it is placed on the top-left corner of the page;

Primary Navigation Menu: primary links, like “About us,” “Contact” and so on, should be clearly distinguishable from secondary page links and placing, a well-designed navigation menu in the header could be a good idea to emphasize primary links.

Subscription options: links, icons and information to subscribe RSS or to follow the updates of the editors of the blogs on the social networking website;

Search form: the search function is very important for a blog and often designers use the header to provide a ready-to-use form for looking for something into the blog;

Advertisement: do your blog has a decent traffic (visitors)? You can add an ads to monetize, but make sure that the banner doesn’t destroy your design. Bloggers generally prefer horizontal banners for the header: 468×68 px, 720×90 px and so on.

Main Content

The core of a blog, where there is the stream of the post. For the WordPress lovers this space is for the loop, in general it is the real dynamic part of the blog that changes its status depending on location (home page, single post page, etc.).
Posts and articles are the most important things for a blog, how many times have we said “content is the king?” True, but a naked king is dreadful. So, you have to design a working block container for your content in order to emphasize you article. A balanced structure and a good typography for headlines, paragraphs and meta information (comments, tags, date, author and so on) are essential to present posts – in a nice way – to the readers.
We have to divide two macro-section designing the main container for a blog: home page and single page.

Into their home page many weblogs include the stream with the last posts, and for each post details for the comments and other meta information like authors, tags and categories.
The single page presents the entire post and on the bottom of the post-page usually we can find links and buttons for sharing the article on social media and the comments of the users.

Sidebar

In two-columns layout it is usually placed on the right, but sometimes we can find also a left-sidebar. The sidebars tend to be used for statistics and to improve navigation on the blog and in fact a well-designed sidebar should include items, such as navigation, popular posts, most commented posts, external widgets from social media, blogroll, to improve interaction of the users with the website.
Take a look below to understand what kind of items you can add into your sidebar.

Advertisement: in this case to monetize the content of your blog you can add a block of banners (125×125 px, 250xX px etc.), for a better CTR the top of the sidebar is the best place for ads spots;

Search form: the sidebar could be a good place for the search form. Obvious, if you have placed the search from on the header it’s not a good idea re-place it on the sidebar;

Subscription options: you can create a nice widget for your sidebar with a list of all subscription options for your blog (RSS, Twitter and other social media);

Recent posts: a list of 10-15 last posts to presents what’s new on the blog;

Most popular posts: a list of 10-15 last posts to presents the popular entries on the blog;

Recent comments: a list of 10-15 recent comments to encourage the discussions;

Authors: for a multi-author blog you can use the sidebar to present all authors to the users;

Blogroll, resources, friends and partners: a list of links to suggest interesting resources or to present friends and partners to your readers;

Footer

The bottom of the page, the ending for your web design job, the final section. This is footer. The part of the site that, in a traditional interpretation, is only for the copyright and some links. But, as I explained in the article “Trends and Examples in Recent Web Design: Big, Informative and Creative Footers,” in modern web design, fortunately, designers and developers are saying “No!” to boring and standard footers. So, we can often find elements such as recent comments or popular posts into the footer.

Well, Now How Can I Design A Better Blog?

Hard question. But my experience suggests me to work scraping the traditional layout and the classic interpretation of the blog. We should start from a fact: “content is the king.” For this reason we have to design emphasizing the content mixing in an unique and creative way the different design elements. At this point I want to ask you: which attribute, peculiarity, of the art of blogging is ever the same since the beginning?
I’ve asked myself this question for a long time and, in my opinion, the key (to answer) is in the first definition of “Weblog”: it’s a personal, private website where sharing exclusive content for a close audience.

As said, nowadays we have several types of blog, and each of them has different characteristics, but all these modern blogs are created to provide high-quality (we hope) content for folks who are interested. So the essence of a blog is the same, today as yesterday, and the main goal is to share exclusive posts with a specific type of users, with a community who follow definite topics. It is not important if the reader is your brother and you’re writing personal things about your life or if you’re writing an interesting article about web design for your community, the main idea of blogging is not changed. For this reason the standardization of the web design for a blog could be a dangerous friend.

My suggestion is: break down the rules of the standard blog design!
Be creative, be unique, be damn special!
That doesn’t mean “build crazy layout for a blog.” I just want to say that there are many ways to be creative. You don’t need to break down all traditional rules working on a project, but only that you have to let work your fantasy to add something of special, personal and creative in your design.

The general structure (header, main content, sidebar, footer) is always a valid start, and you should keep it in your mind; but a personal touch for some elements, which deviates from the traditional interpretation, can make precious you work.