5 Design Tips for a Teacher Blog

Setting up my blog was pretty easy but there were a lot of considerations to make. Here I share with you five of the most important design elements that I found on many of the most successful and well-done teacher blogs. These are all simple to implement and really add a professional and friendly look to you page. Over the coming days I will also share step-by-step guides to accomplish each! 

1. A nice background and a pretty header image:

Teri's site is colorful and cute with a vibrant header and color scheme. 

These two elements of your blog are perhaps the most visible of them all. Depending on the template that you use, your header should be 960px wide and around 250px tall. The size is something you can play with, but it should be bright, colorful and inviting. A Cupcake for the Teacher is a premium template design (around $30 from Dreamlike Magic), but with some imagination you can easily create your own header design! Changing them is simple to do and requires no coding.

2. Attractive headers for your side-bar gadgets:

Abby uses a fun font and adorable flags to head each gadget.

If you ventured to Teri's site, then you found that her gadget headers were attractive and organized her site really well. Abby's site, which from what I can tell is not a premium template, has her own headers for the same function! There is no special trick (well there is a little one that I will share in an upcoming post), each of these headers is simply a picture gadget that is placed above the gadget they describe. The "meet babbling abby" gadget image is organized above the profile gadget in Abby's Blogger layout. In my upcoming post, I will share with you how to add your own and how to remove that extra space between your gadget header and the gadget. These headers are a simple way to take more control of how your blog looks!

3. Add a "grab my button" button:

Mrs. McKown has a great button that you can easily grab and use!

Every single teacher site I put in the "keeper pile" has one of these fancy little buttons! Any blogger can add your button to their own blog to show their support and love for you. As you can see, the button for Little Literacy Learners is colorful, attractive and unobtrusive. It can easily fit into any site design yet stands on its own. The typical size is 125 x 125 but they can vary. The important piece here is that little box with code that anyone can simply cut and paste into an HTML Gadget on their blog. Adding this element to your blog is simple and quick and I'll show you how its done next week!

4. Show your blog followers:

Deanna has a strong following and it's easy to join her site.

This one is easy because Blogger gives you the widget. All you have to do is add it to your layout! In addition to RSS feeds and other email subscriptions, showing your followers is a great way to prove "social clout" in addition to just showing off the great folks that follow you. It's also the best way to build a community centered around your blog. It isn't going to help you unless your blog is interesting or informative, but it's a must-have to grow your following and develop a strong and often-read blog! There are other friend/follower features you can add (such as a facebook gadget). Just ask and I'll post a how-to :)

5. Center your post title and date; fonts!:

Allison's blog has post headings and dates centered.

This one was a surprise to me, not because it's difficult to accomplish, but because nearly every major teacher blog has centered posts headings and dates! The font size and colors vary, but take notice of this while visiting your favorite blogs. How many use this? There are many horrible explanations of  how to accomplish this little task, and there is no simple way to do it in the dynamic layout editor. It just takes a few lines of CSS and is quick and painless if done right. Look for them next week along with some other nifty hints! 

Oh, and just a note on font! I know how much we teachers love fun and nifty fonts, but throw away the fancy fonts in your post-body text. They are difficult to read and I haven't found many top blogs that uses anything other than the basic fonts. I'm even contemplating changing my Courier New font to Veranda or maybe just Times New Roman.

 

Happy blogging and happy summer! If you have a specific request for your blog, leave a comment. I'm a tech-savvy + teacher and will try to help where and when I can! I'll be sharing guides for each of the things above and pretty much anything else I come across or add to my own blog.

Cheers and good luck!