A cohesive website theme is important for both aesthetics and user retention: You WANT to attract people with eye-catching visuals, then make sure they stay because it’s both pleasant to the eye and works well with the content you provide.
In my theme, I chose to use these:
- Latest Posts
- Archive
- Search bar
- Social Media buttons
- Tag Cloud
Latest posts is used in the blog section, and speaks for itself. This widget with its reverse-chronological showcase order allows readers to check out any blogs I’ve published and quickly access the most recent ones available.
Archive is set in the footer, allowing readers to access posts by the month/year they were uploaded. Maybe a user remembers which time frame I may have uploaded a particular post, and can check it out from there.
The search bar I have placed in the bottom, allowing readers to quickly type in specific terms to find particular posts that the term resides in. While there is an existing search button up top, this general one is easier to spot and would allow the reader to input from there especially on longer posts.
Social media buttons allow for readers to find me on other websites. If I am more active with developing content in these areas, they can follow me over there to find out the latest things I’m working on or discover other facets of my life unrelated to the blog.
The tag cloud is the final widget, placed to allow readers to quickly check out other populated tags on the blog. Perhaps a reader would find a new or unfamiliar term, or want to check out other posts that exist with the same tag. The tag cloud in this case would allow them to use this functionality.
I have implemented all of these so that readers can use one of the many possible searching avenues to quickly locate posts they may want to read or find the one post they are looking for without too much hassle. In case they enjoy the content I make here, they can use the social media buttons to access other areas on the internet I exist in and check out what I have in store for them over there.
Other portions to the theme I have customized are the background image and changing theme colors around. The background theme is a painting named “‘House of the Tragic Poet’ at Pompeii” at the Royal Palace from the National Library of Naples. I opted for this image as the painting evokes an ethereal quality: a fantastical setting etched in faded colors. Fantasy can evoke similar feelings, where you are taken to a far and away world that brings to life adventures and experiences you can only imagine.
The header, footer, and button colors have all similarly been changed to fit a certain color palette I had in mind. I enjoy playing with warm and cool colors, so I used the orange tints to draw the reader’s attention to them indicating interactivity while the cool blues push away attention to focus on the main content in the center. The purple link colors are default to the theme, but as they are complimentary colors with orange so they stand out and become recognizable as in-site links.
Scheduling design changes in advance is always a decent option for developing your blog. By scheduling changes, you allow yourself time to make sure that you can apply any snap changes (anything from as small as a heading color change to as big as whole theme adjustments) without disrupting the current reading space. This also keeps from rapid-fire changes causing additional downloading, which could eat up download limits for users with data caps. Scheduled changes (with advance notice) also helps keep readers from getting surprised by sudden blog developments. If a reader refreshes the blog and the site changes without notice, they could potentially leave thinking they have arrived on the wrong website or were redirected due to a security issue. This could be disastrous for user metrics.