Visual appeal is something that attracts people to any blog or website. Apart from delivering unparalleled quality content, you must have a blog that is aesthetic and has basic stuff. Everyone loves to go to a place that looks professional and can be navigated easily.
So in building your blog, you must have in mind that you are going to have a lot of people visiting you every day. Human traffic may initially be sparse, but over time it becomes very heavy. Creating a site that will retain every visitor should therefore be paramount.
You may not be a professional web designer or blog creator; And you may not have the resources to hire a professional designer to do this work. But there are places online where you can get tools that can help you design a professional and clean-looking website or blog.
Some of the basics for a great-looking site include templates, widgets, graphics, forms, plug-ins, and more. You do not need to have prior knowledge of HTML, CSS, JQuery, JavaScript, PHP, or other forms of coding. You can use them. They are already especially made by professionals and you only need to apply them where you need them.
Templates
You can get your quality and customizable templates from the following sites:
1. Mybloggertricks: This is one of my frequently visited sites. The site provides you with quality templates like “Tanzanite, Cute Box, Buster” etc. Apart from templates, you also get nice icons, widgets, buttons, animated banners, etc. for free. The site owner takes personal pains to answer every question of his customers. The blog is updated daily to keep you updated with the latest in the blogging industry.
2. Allblogtools: This is another place I love because of the quality and variety of templates available here. You can get templates with one, two, three, four columns, etc. Blogging tutorials are also available from which you can learn some blogging tricks.
3. Stunningmesh: Stunningmesh also has quality templates and other widgets and web design tutorials to help you out. You can get all kinds of tutorials for free from WordPress themes and coding to Photoshop, CSS, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc, and more.
4. Smashingmagazine: This is a very rich site where you can get many tools for your blog as well. Here you get both free and paid coding tools like (CSS, JQuery, Javascript, WordPress Essentials, Mastering WordPress); Web Design, Freelancing, eBooks, etc. A free e-book that is especially useful for beginners is “Best Articles of 2006-2011”.
5. WordPress: If you have a desire to write under a WordPress blog, you can get exclusive themes for your writing, no matter which field you have chosen. You also get special plugins to enable you to give a professional touch to your blog.
6. BestBlogger Templates: They have many good blogger templates (one, two, three, and four columns). They also have free premium templates that you can use. Tutorials and other blogger tricks are available to you as a beginner.
Contact Forms
You may want to add a contact form to your site so that your visitors and readers can contact you and also reduce spamming. You can do this by getting some HTML code that you can add to your “contact us” page to create a form for your users to fill out every time they want to reach you. You can get free and the hosting site processes your form every time someone leaves a message and sends a message to your mailbox. Some sites you can use include:
7. Foxyform: Here you can design a contact form using the given template. After filling in the required fields, you will be provided with an HTML code that you enter on your “Contact Us” page using your HTML editor. I have been using Forms for my blog for some time now and it is working really fine.
8. 123Contactform: You can also use this service to create a free contact form for your blog and let your visitor contact you without filling up tons of spam letters in your personal mailbox.
9. Mycontactform: Like the two sites mentioned earlier, Mycontactform is also a good place to get free forms for your blog and make it look a little professional.
Site Map
If you are interested in getting search engine robots to crawl and index your site, you will need to generate a sitemap for them. A sitemap is similar to a compass that shows search engine robots how to navigate your site successfully. Not only do robots need your sitemap, but humans need it too. This makes it possible for people and search engine spiders to easily find their way through your blog, even if there is no one to guide them.
10. Buka-Rahasia: This site has helped me solve my sitemap problem, especially after I received an early warning from another site that the site was a source of malware distribution. You can obtain a sitemap generating code for your site and paste it into your “Sitemap” page using an HTML editor in the same way that you created the contact form.
Now you can have a beautiful blog with a really cool template, widgets, plugins, contact form, and sitemap. You need to visit the above-listed sites for everything you need to build a professional-looking site.
Basic Blog Tools
Blogging Software: Your first decision when starting a blog is to determine which blogging tool is right for you. There are dozens of blogging platforms out there: Blogger, WordPress, MovableType, Expression Engine, just to name a few. Take a look at some examples of blogs that were created with the tool you’re considering, as an indication of what each makes possible. One thing is for sure: while you can spend money on a high-end blog platform, you have plenty of free options that are more than enough to build a good-looking blog. For example, WordPress is a free tool that enjoys immense popularity and is even used by many large corporations for their online presence. I would encourage you to look at several things carefully before taking the plunge.
Blog Themes: After the basic installation is complete, most blog software uses a theme or template as a way to set up the look and functionality of the blog. Design elements such as columns and headers as well as the fonts and colors that help set up the blog visually are largely controlled by the theme you choose. The number of themes and templates you can choose from varies widely depending on the blog tool you are using. Some web designers charge for a theme they create, but as with your basic blog software tools, paying for a theme isn’t necessary to have a good-looking, bug-free blog installation.
Plug-ins: Plug-ins, or add-ons, extend the functionality of your site beyond themes. These are very small programs that are often created and shared by different programmers to accomplish a specific task that they and other people may find useful. A plug-in that adds a list of your blog’s favorite posts is an example of a little useful programming that you can add to your blog by pasting the code for the plug-in into your theme. I don’t want to sound too much like an advertisement for WordPress, but the plugins available for WordPress (in addition to the number of WordPress themes available) are almost endless.
Hosting for your blog: Once you have chosen a blog tool that you like, you need to determine if you are capable and willing to handle the hosting yourself. Some blog tools, such as Blogger and WordPress.org, provide you with hosted blogging solutions, in other words, you set up your blog through their site and then just start blogging! If you’re not interested in the technical side of websites and just want to focus on creating content, you should know that these free tools, as well as others, make it very easy.
One downside if you don’t handle your own hosting is that you usually can’t use a unique domain name that you purchase, but will instead have a site URL that contains the words “Blogspot” or “WordPress”. shall include. If you host your own blog you will need a little technical proficiency from time to time to get things running properly, although at least the initial installation is nowadays automated through whatever web host you choose. Another downside of self-hosting is definitely the cost. You can get basic hosting for just a few dollars a month, but the amount can be prohibitive for some people.
There’s a lot to consider when you’re trying to decide which blogging tool to use for your online presence. There is a learning curve, but the good news is that once you educate yourself a bit and decide on a blog platform, you can just focus on writing and creating content. But take your time. It can be difficult to change your blogging software later.