Grunge Crumbles: How to start your own blog: Layout

The first impressions are really important for your blog and what can bring that better than your layout? The best way to give your blog an organised and professional look is to keep it minimalistic. I listed a couple of ways to do so, continue reading to see them!

THE HEADER

I hate pictures in headers with my whole soul. I don't know what it is but it just gives this really cheap look. I usually just go for a the name of the blog in a cool font. You can add a picture but only as long as it has a transparent background or when it isn't too distracting and fits with the rest of your layout.

You can download a lot of cool fonts at dafont.com. That's where I also got my own font. I always use picmonkey.com since you can use your own downloaded fonts there! If you need help on how to make a header, you can ask down below in the comments and I'll make a blogspost about it!

THE BACKGROUND

Never use a picture as a background! Because 1) it's really hard to read the text then and 2) it looks so cheap! I recommend to use a white or grey tone. Do you really want to have a picture as a background? Make sure it's not where the post is. I don't know how to explain it, but blogger offers some themes who have something like a white background over your picture background when there's a post. Damn, I'm really really bad at explaining. I hope your good at hints.

THE SIDEBAR

Still questioning if you want to have your sidebar on the right or the left? Just do what you want! Most bloggers have them on the right, but I used to like it on the left. In case you're wondering why it's on the right if I like it on the left; well my theme only offers it on the right...

You can put all your widgets in the sidebar but don't make it too packed with widgets. Always make sure the first widget is a little welcome note. I always like to see a picture of the blogger there because that makes it feel more personal instead of just some random person behind a laptop. Say your name and say really short what you're blog is about so your readers know what they are about to read. Below that you can put a searchbar. That's just something every blog needs. After that I made a little widget where you can see my main themes so your readers can easily find posts about their favourite subject. You can also put this in your menubar (is that a word?) instead of in your sidebar. You can place the next widgets in any kind of order you want, depending on what you think is the most important one. Things you can add: follow buttons, labels, archive and popular posts.

PICTURES

For some reason blogger automatically adds some kind of shadow and a border to your pictures. Maybe you like that, but I'm not a big fan of that. You can remove that border with an easy css!

Go to your dashboard > template > customise > advanced > add css > add the following code:

img {
padding: 0 !important;
border: none !important;
background: none !important;
-moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px transparent !important;
-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px transparent !important;
box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px transparent !important;
}