It’s crazy to think about, but The Blog Market has been around almost a full year now! Going through our old posts, we thought it would be helpful to roundup the top ones for getting started with a blog design. It seemed pretty convenient to have all these in one place to refer to when actually going through the design and development process! Keep in mind, some of these are geared toward WordPress users, but most of the tutorials can be referenced for other platforms as well.
Top 8 blog design posts
1. We listed the top mistakes we’ve made before we knew what we were doing with blog design. If you’ve never created your own blog design before trust me you could walk right into these traps!
2. One of the hardest part about designing… Settling on a color palette, of course! It’s amazing how something so simple can be so complicated; which is why we have a great color palette resource. Tip, choose something you can be sure you won’t get sick of! Otherwise you’ll want to redo the whole thing within a month.
3. We love Genesis when it comes to building a WordPress website. That’s now that we understand all it can do. If you’re thinking of giving Genesis a try, these top plugins will confirm your decision!
4. So everyone just starting out on WordPress needs to know the difference between WordPress .com and .org. I highly recommend knowing the difference before building a website or switching over from blogger, for example, as not fully understanding the difference can be major!
5. If you’re building a self hosted website aka WordPress.org, you need to host it yourself – hence self hosted. It took me awhile to fully understand that process, but luckily Jenn has it town pat and can help you with this Bluehost tutorial.
6. You’ve decided to go for it with a self-hosted website. Now is a crucial point in your design. Even if you want to do everything yourself, you’ll likely use a template to get started. We’ll talk about Genesis below, but if you’re not there yet or deciding on a template that can do most of the work for you, you’ll want to know this before you commit.
7. Fonts are tricky business when designing. One thing you need to be sure about is whether you can actually use your fonts on your site. Web fonts ensure standard use across browsers and devices, so learning all about them will be a huge help before you get to the fun part, choosing which to use!
8. We’ve put up many CSS tutorials over the past year, but they won’t help if you don’t know what CSS is and why you should use it. If you’re thinking of doing some coding for your own design, read this post first and then head to our CSS basics section to follow specific tutorials. If you get stuck, Earl Grey Creative (Jenn’s biz) can help you perfect your design.
Tika says
Hello! I am a brand new blogger and currently use the Lily Child Theme on WordPress. It’s not my favorite, especially since I’ve had a lot of issues with font and font size. I have had to ask for a ton of help to custom design the look of my site too.
In your experience, how often do you change the theme of your blog? Also, is it fairly easy to transition themes, especially when you add CSS/ various plug-ins?
Will definitely be utilizing this post to help me design my blog better :), so thank you!
Tika
Jennifer says
Hi Tika! We’ve changed our theme every year or so, but each time we begin with the same template and just customize it differently. I would recommend keeping a backup of all of your CSS in case you end up needing to use it in future themes (especially if you’re using it to customize plugins).
We love the Genesis Framework which has a bunch of cute child themes you can purchase. Check out our theme posts here:
https://www.theblogmarket.co/why-we-love-using-the-genesis-framework-for-wordpress-sites/
https://www.theblogmarket.co/genesis-themes-for-bloggers/
Hope this helps! :)