My blog page powered by WordPress began with its first post on 28th July, 2009. Since then until mid-December 2009 I’ve used a number of themes for the display of this blog page. They all had one thing in common. On the left of the page were all my latest posts, in chronological order, and in full, with the most recent post at the top. Earlier pages of posts could be accessed via a link at the bottom of the page, or via the Archives listed by month in the right sidebar (or in one of them if there were two sidebars).
The sidebar or sidebars contained a search facility, lists of the latest posts and comments, links, a list of categories, a tag cloud (a more specific search by subject matter), archives and calendar (in some themes), and so on.
This type of blog page is sometimes referred to as a classic blog theme design.
The theme I adopted in mid-December was very different. The front page, unlike previous themes, did not show a number of posts in full, in chronological order from latest post to earlier posts. It was more like the contents page of a magazine with excerpts of posts and an image to entice you to click on each post to read the full post. The full post was on a page of its own, and at the bottom of the post you could make comments and read those made by others (if any).
The new theme also had a navigation bar with drop-down lists where applicable, to lead you to other pages that are of a static nature (much like the pages on the rest of my website).
This type of blog page is sometimes referred to as a magazine blog theme design.
Near the end of January 2010, Felix at RichWP.com, the creator of the magazine layout theme I’d been using since mid-December 2009, emailed his clients advising that he’d been thinking for quite a while about releasing a classic blog theme. He’d noticed that when looking at the top 100 blogs of the world, a classic blog theme is the design approach which is being used the most. As a result, Felix had released a new theme with a classic blog theme such as that described above.
I like the new theme, so I switched to it on 30 January 2010. In many ways, I far prefer the look of the magazine design, as it has lots of colour and images, and an interesting layout. But visitors can’t read a recent post in full without clicking on its “teaser” excerpt to go to the page for that post. I’m not sure whether visitors like that – or find it discouraging to look at a post, or tiresome, if not annoying – as I’ve had no feedback. Now that I have returned to a classic blog theme layout with the new design by Felix, visitors can read my 10 latest posts in full by scrolling down the page.
However, because Felix design both the magazine design and the new classic design, they are interchangeable. The additional pages which you can access from the navigation bar at the top, and the Archive page (which is also a sitemap) are unchanged.
Tip: Use the keyboard’s End key as a shortcut to go to the bottom of a blog page, and the Home key to return to the top of the page. The keyboard’s Page Up and Page Down keys also help in moving around.
Bad Behavior has blocked 15 access attempts in the last 7 days.