Comments on: Does your blog structure and design attract and hold on to readers?

By: teeni

teeni — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:12:25 +0000

Hi Pelf! I’m just stopping in to congratulate my fellow bloggers who made Opal’s Spotlight this week! You have a lot of information here – I’ll have to keep coming back because I’m such a newbie at all this blogging stuff – but I AM thoroughly enjoying myself :)

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:45:26 +0000

Thanks, Ben. And you keep blogging your passion!

By: soufulow

soufulow — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:44:05 +0000

1. loads in less than 10 seconds.

For Malaysia readers, i think that depends heavily on Streamyx’s ‘mood’. :D

By: Ben G.

Ben G. — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 03:22:16 +0000

Agreed! It's somewhat interesting to me to see how many blog themes out there (not just for WP) put the sidebar first. Especially from people who should know better like Derek Powazek's DePo Clean Theme. I mean, Derek is a blogging god, and he's easily one of the major factors in why I began blogging in the first place. But I'm not sure why his theme, which is EXCELLENT, puts the sidebar first. I think it's to get it to float to the right and just above the main content. Anyway, I digress. I really appreciate talking to you, Lorelle. I just watched a couple of your videos from WordCamp and I thought they were very good. Keep up the great blogging.

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:41:39 +0000

I love it when someone brown-noses, especially when they are blushing :D

I could talk for HOURS about SEO – oh wait, I have! Yes, the order of the structure really matters to search engines – but not so much to Google any more.

In the “old days” search engines had so much to search, they only scanned the first 1/3 or half of a web page before moving off. That’s when “content first” mattered most. Unfortunately, not all CSS designs can put content first and still work. That’s a major flaw in the design process as it currently stands.

“Other” search engines (whoever they are ;-) ) still may scan only the partial page, but Google now works with a checks and balances method that checks for changing in the page and if there are none in the first part of the page, they move on to the next and checks it for “new” stuff. Their first round through, triggered via pings, scans everything then checks against that record.

I still believe in “content first” and have battled the limitations of CSS over the years. I created one of the first templates that put content first, sidebar and footer at the end, breaking free of table-based designs in 2000. CSS was still in its infancy.

Ah, the good old days – bleck! You can have them! :D