I’m in the middle of revamping this blog and one of the main problems i face is choosing to go with a magazine theme or just leave it the way it is – as a traditional blog where there are no ‘read more’ links.
Up until now i’ve never been a fan of magazine themes on personal blogs, but i’m slowly warming to them. Advantages of a magazine theme?
- More images, so more pleasing on the eye.
- Looks more symmetrical so again it’s more pleasing on the eye.
- You can predict the size of the frontpage because all posts are the same length, same size pictures – therefore you can optimize loading time /SEO.
- Can fit more content / posts on homepage
Disadvantages of magazine theme?
- People have to click the ‘read more’ link to read the entire post – so it requires more effort on their part.
- Page loads increase, which can be seen as a good or bad thing i suppose.
- Requires more work on my part – using thumbnails, coming up with catchy opening lines to grab attention and make you read on etc…
I have to say i’m leaning towards the magazine type style for this new design mainly because it looks better and it will force me in to writing better. For example on theleavingcert.com, i know the title of the post must be interesting. The opening sentence must also be interesting & the thumbnail image must also grab attention, otherwise people won’t bother clicking on the ‘read more’ link.
Although i’m leaning towards the magazine style, there are very few existing magazine themes which i like, so i’ll probably have to pick the best of a bad lot and then spend a lot of time modifying it.
I think that going with the magazine option would be good, because it will only really affect the people that go directly to your front page by tying in your URL, if they are typing in your URL then surely they have interest in your blog and will click the read more button.
Then when people are visiting from other sides such as twitter or through Google results the page they go to will just be the full blog post so they wont be challenged with having to click 'read more' .
all my favourite blogs are the simplest, most minimal.
I'm not mad on magazine-style layouts for personal blogs, i like to be able to skim over the posts and get to the meat. they have their place, of course, but for solo-blogs, I prefer a more minimal approach.