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Deciding on the Structure (and layout) of my Blog

While preparing and thinking about the content of the course I would develop together with my partner, I realize that, after making the previous post on this blog, that the layout was a little uncomfortable for the viewer. Since I can view my blog from the perspective of a visitor, it is clear that some navigation issues may have arose. 

The biggest thing that seemed out of place, was the posts appearing on the blog itself. Below, you may see the before and after. 

The screenshot above shows how the post would be separated as a "featured" post, which in the context of my blog seems misplaced, since I do not necessarily want to highlight my latest post, since the blog is more in the format of a reflection. The solution was simple - remove the featured post and make all the posts appear as a thread of continuous posts.

The screenshot above is the result of what is more continuous and clearly flowing.

One of the reasons why I decided to make this change, is one of the sessions that we had for Innovating Learning and Teaching, where we viewed three blogs of differing quality. All the posts made in the blogs had no issue, but the layout was different in all of them. 

The balance I was looking for are included as the following criteria for my blog: 
  • Ease of Use - the layout does not require me, or any other part of the blog, to have an explanation of how to use and navigate around the blog. 
  • Access to Posts - the layout should clearly provide the structure of my blog, and allow readers to see that posts are made in reverse-chronological order. Simply put, the reader can easily navigate around all posts and see how I progressed. 
  • Distraction Free - this was probably the most important point, at least for me. I want my blog to have as little clutter as possible, which also meant that I cleaned up the template in the "layout" settings of my blog.
These criteria help me identify what I want my blog to look like and make it more user friendly allowing readers to see clearly how I progressed with my blog, entries, my course and reflection on Literature (yes, this is coming too). 

(384 words)

Comments

  1. Great, it is cool that you can play with the layout. How could you improve the platform if you were appointed as a web designer of Google Blogger?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is great, that you also put yourself in reader's shoes. Your Blog-design is really easy to explore.

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  3. Very informative post. Where have you been when I started to explore the Blogger and had the same issues? ) I didn't even try to change anything and silently moved to edublogs )

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello, I like your post and learned a lot from it. The content is well organised and focused on practical situations.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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