Is Your Sidebar Detracting From Your Site?
March 9, 2008
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A few days ago, Skellie posted about Creating Sidebars That Work, and this got me to thinking about the way that I generally try to lay out the sidebars of the various sites that I work on. And when I went back and looked at them, they all seemed to be a little different.
Now, in some instances, this may be necessary. A niche site could have needs that suit that particular niche in the sidebar. But the point was, that adding to much stuff into the sidebar can be bad, but having just a barebones sidebar could be just as bad if it doesn’t give your readers access to information that might need about you or your site.
When I look at the sidebar for BloggingNotes, it has a tendency to look a little cluttered, but there really isn’t a whole lot there. Links to my top commenters, links to my del.icio.us bookmarks, archives, email subscription form and a tag cloud.
I’m thinking of doing a little streamlining of the sidebar over the next few days, because I think that there’s some things that might be detracting from what readers might be getting from the site.
What could you stand to remove from the sidebar on your site? There’s got to be something that doesn’t serve a real purpose, so let’s hear it.
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March 9th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Is Your Sidebar Detracting From Your Site?…
While it’s certainly true that nothing is more important than content for your blog, design has to play some part in the whole thing as well. And by design I don’t mean cool graphics or anything like that, but rather how easy the site is to *use* an…
March 9th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Take a look at my very minimalist cigar niche site linked in my signature. The sidebar, which is mainly for SEO purposes rather than usability, is way at the bottom, more of a footer than a sidebar. Article and advertising content is up front. While I don’t know how well this approach would work for a socially oriented blog it might be an interesting experiment.
Frank C’s last blog post..Setting Up Your Cigar Humidor the Right Way
March 10th, 2008 at 6:56 am
It does act more like a footer. It’s an interesting layout, one I don’t think I’ve seen before. You’re right, though, while I could see a setup like this working for a niche site, I don’t know how well it would go over on a socially oriented site.
Thanks for the feedback though, Frank.