Drakenhart Studios

Art Blogs: A Definition

First, to detail what is a “blog”.
The term blog is a shortened form of a short form term. I kid you not. Blog stands for web log, which is the short technical term for an internet journal website. In the last several years blogging, or posting journal entries online where others may read them, has become hugely popular. Many companies have jumped on the bandwagon to their benefit, as blogging gives one the ability to reach out to clients in ways that the old standbys, opt-in email lists, show a weakness. (However don’t entirely discount opt-in email lists. That will be a different article.)

Next, covering what is an “art blog”?

An art blog is simply a website or blog-site wherein you share your artwork with people in a digital, journal-posting, environment. Generally the idea behind an art blog is a place where one can post about one’s own artwork and the various topics related to it. Primarily, you post finished art samples, WIPs (Works in Progress), and share you experience with working on a piece. However some artists have found that sharing other art-related content adds value to their art blog as well.

Every artist is their own expert after all. So art-related content, writing about art-related topics, sharing your ideas, hopes, dreams, WIPs (Works in Progress), and asking for critiques benefit not only you but others who follow your art blog. One is able to post about specials, sales, special commissions, ask for help from other artists and more. What goes into am art blog is entirely up to the artist themselves.

The comment section of your art blog allows for conversations about the topics your share, as much as it does just general comments, so there is the chance of interaction, communication, and sharing of ideas. One doesn’t get this benefit from opt-in email lists. The closet one gets to this level of interaction may be in an online forum, but such places aren’t as centered on an individual artist’s work. Art blog are more personal, and more focused on one particular artist and their artistic journey.

Benefits of an Art Blog

The benefits of an art blog are many. From personal satisfaction and the need to share, or in some cases show off, art blogs offer a marketing medium, interactivity, and do the one thing so many companies seek to do in their daily routine – attract business and build up a potential client base. Sharing of information, tips, tutorials, advice on art business, and more, art blogs offer a wide array of mostly untapped potential.

Focused Interactive Communication
Aside from opt-in email lists which are a staple form of communication online, and forums that do not focus on one particular artist’s works, art blogs are a powerful form of communication with other internet users. Art blogs let visitors and potential clients see the artist for the person and the professional they are in a “fresh” way.

It is similar to, but not the same as, being at an art gallery opening so folks can speak with one directly. Art blogs give users a chance to communicate with the artist and ask questions about the art, style, choices made, inspiration, and techniques.

Art blogs offer the artist a way of talking about their artwork even as they post samples of it. Many physical Galleries, as well as some of the online, digital-style, flat web site galleries, don’t often allow the artist to share information about their art aside from specific details (dimensions, print availability, medium, etc). Some physically galleries may offer pamphlets, flyers, or other means of physical sharing, but that isn’t true communication as there is no interaction between artist and viewer. Some of the community-style online art galleries offer communication, yet there is the competition for traffic one must deal with in those regards.
An art blog offers a direct, clean, clear cut way of communicating with an audience that is there specifically to see a particular artist’s works.

Unique way to Showcase Art
This is a much different style of posting art then it is when one uploads it to a gallery-style web site. With most normal gallery-style websites an artist leaves their comments in the description section with the art is highlighted by being left to “float” on its own. This is reminiscent of traditional gallery showcasing. The difference with some gallery sites is that the description can host more than just the flat basics of the artwork in question. The artist can leave a comment, thought, poem, and more as well.

However in many cases, from what I’ve witnessed, this is sometimes totally over looked.

As an observation, I’ve noted that descriptions which flow around the artwork as one might see in a magazine article, or have the artwork as part of the discussion as is sometimes seen within various art forums, seem to be read more often. From an aesthetic point of view, the blocks of text are broken up as the commentary flows around it. This can make it easier to read for the viewer. Art posted within the embrace of text offers the text more interest, especially if what is spoken about relates to the images shared within the post.

Think of your old grade school text books and how the images helped to explain, or gave importance to, bits of informative text. Remember the bit we learned in school from our art professors about how an artist’s “wins” with their artwork? Getting a viewer to stop, maybe double-check, pause, or otherwise slow down to truly view and appreciate the artwork? Adding a message around the art gives the viewer pause as they become a reader. The information shared within the text portion of the post offers the reader a chance to develop into a more interested viewer of the artwork. Win-win.

Unique Traffic
Traffic, be it foot traffic in a physical art gallery, highway traffic passing by billboards, or digital traffic visiting a website, is vital. If people don’t see the art, then to them it doesn’t exist. However you want to appeal to those who will better appreciate the artwork, so you want specifically unique traffic as well. It doesn’t help the abstract artist if those who appreciate realism visit their site, for example.

Blogs in general generate a lot of traffic on their own. The content is fresh, new, and constantly updated! The search engines, especially the big ones, love fresh content and an artist who posts about something specific (niche-marketing technique), or focuses their art posts to a more narrow category, will naturally drive amazing amounts of traffic to their websites.

Art blogs have a special bonus of visual appeal as they add artwork to the mix of text. Combine specific notes on a piece, along with some tips, advice, or a learning experience with images of the piece and the artist will find an increase in the number of unique visitors.

Should I Get One?

Generally every artist will benefit in some way by posting to a dedicated art blog. However, it really depends on the amount of time an artist puts into it, how thick their “skin” when it comes to negative comments, and how well they interact socially. Remember that online, public sites are accessible to just about anyone, even detractors and “trolls”. One must always show some level of professionalism when interacting with their blog followers, although stiff and overly formal isn’t required. One may put as much of their personality into their posts as they wish, but it must be tempered with the courtesy and respect one wishes to receive for themselves.

If you feel you have to defend your artwork, have a tendency to write inflammatory posts, or “argue” instead of having “professional debates” maybe an art blog isn’t for you. Such blogs attract more trolls and detractors, and showcase the artist as being overly temperamental and unprofessional. This can harm potential sales, drive away potential clients, and does not add value to an artist’s site.

Only you know you best.

On the other hand, if you are a social butterfly and are capable of handling negative comments without “fighting” with your commentators, then an art blog may be something you want to look into. There is inherent value in this form of showcasing one’s work, and it adds overall value to the internet as well. This is especially true when one is posting educational, informative, and/or helpful tidbits along side of their artwork.
In some cases, though not as wide spread as one might think, some artists forgo the typical “gallery”-style website and only maintain an art blog specifically for the purposes of sharing their artistic journey. Running an art blog is about what you want and what you can handle as an artist.

Art Blog Posting Tips

I have seen successful and not so successful art blogs in my time. So let me share with you just a few tips when posting to your art blog.

Focus:
The idea is to keep it as art-centric as possible, and to keep away from the “generic blog” feel.
Keep your art blog to a theme, or single idea. Also, keep in mind what sorts of art-related content you are adding to you art blog. The more focused the blog, the easier it is to find specific information and thus the more useful viewers find it.

Don’t lose focus and start posting non-art-related stuff to your art blog. Keep as much personal, non-art-related, posts out of your art blog as is humanly possible. Generally I mean posts that talk about what your cat fluffy did yesterday that you found funny. If Fluffy inspired you to draw a small cartoon of him/her then by all means add it to your blog, otherwise you clutter up the blog and make it harder for visitors to find what they want to view, read, and learn.

Think about what you want to accomplish with you art blog. Are you just sharing your journey? Are you trying to use it as a mode of advertising? Is the art blog meant to share tutorials and how-to’s? Are you offering advice on art business? Do you have years of experience in watercolor paints and wish to share tips and tricks on certain difficult techniques? An art blog can successfully focus on very narrow aspects of art, or mix a number of them together in a way that complements each other.

Personal:
Many art blogs come across as dry and overly stiff. Most of the time people want to see a little bit of the artist’s personality shine through. The way we write often reflects how we talk and act, and that adds a personal touch to any blog.

However, text is very neutral. Others can read into it meanings, reactions, or attitudes that are not actually there. So be careful of any jokes, or sarcasm that aren’t obvious. Even if you think it is obvious, don’t expect your visitors to know what you mean, understand a bit of sarcasm, or “get” a joke. The internet brings us globally closer together, and culture clashes can cause hiccups along the way.

Enhancements:
Videos are very popular right now. You may want to make a video tutorial, or show a work in progress as it is worked on. This can be incorporated into your art blog without losing its focus. One can either upload Video (or podcasts, or both) to one’s artblog or talk about what the video is about.

There is even the option of further narrowing your focus by simply hosting a vlog (Video Blog) and nothing more. This goes over well for sites that are specifically focused on art tutorials, or offer advice on techniques.
Photography of inspirational sites, people, places, and things (keep in mind trademarks and copyright issues when posting photos of certain things) can be posted as well.

Such sites offer a range of benefits to the art communities as a whole, especially as a reference site for other artists! Such sites that boast photos often is an inspiration to other artists. Photographs of WIPs are popular, as seeing a work as it progresses often helps other artists to understand a technique or style. Many non-artists like seeing photographs of paintings in frames, or images of sculptures being worked on. Many businesses that create objects to sell may post WIPs to show potential clients the level of detail they are offering in their work.

In fact a Photo-blog is a form of art blog in and of its own! These can range from a professional photo portfolio, to travel pictures of favorite destinations, and into a collection of references. A Photo-blog may even offer tutorials of how to capture the best picture.

Just be sure you have a policy in regards to the photographs you take to post, and to the copyright issues for posting such on your art blog.

Policies:

Make sure your policies, copyright, trademark, and such information is easily accessible and openly public. In many cases mistakes are made that cause untold headaches for you and others when this isn’t made painfully obvious to your visitors!

Overview

An art blog is a way of sharing your art in a unique, non-traditional manner that requires a little bit of fore-thought. If done well it adds content to the internet that is compelling, fresh, and new.

Keep in mind that art blogs are public, and may require a few stiff but professional reminders as to your rights as an artist. Enjoy it but don’t abuse it.

Above have fun with it!

Welcome to Themes

Themes, also known among some as “skins”, consists of the html, css, and images that make a site look the way it does. Those UI (User Interface) designers who do not do a lot of back-end coding can, feasibly, work up a Theme. One doesn’t need a lot of design skill, not with all the tutorials and help sites out there today. But taking that Theme from Image Mock-up to final product requires a little bit more effort.

What it requires is the ability to understand a given CMS (Content Managemnt System) and how it outputs the data it manages. The level of difficulty in doing this depends entirely on what you are trying to accomplish.

Levels of Complexity and Difficulty

Making a skin using the defaults that come with a CMS is the easiet way of handling this. Because so many designers want something unique, the defaults are rarely seen as much as one might come to believe. But this doesn’t make the site look or feel unique even if the defaults aren’t used as much. It still seems like a re-colored clone.

The next level consists of designing an entire site the way you want it to look, while taking into consideration the “parts” that the CMS Outputs. For instance WordPress outputs a header, footer, content area, and sidebars (if they are enabled). Since this is automatic to any given CMS, you need to design with these sections in mind and determine what goes where as you work.

The next level consists of tweaking the existing code either by applying small hacks or re-arranging how things show up on a given page. You may wish to change the front page into a semi-static landing page with RSS feeds that show up in the sidebar, for example. This requires an understanding of how the CMS’s system handles such extras, if it does at all, and how outside code might effect the final output. Any good designer knows well that a small bit of stray code can cause havoc in how a site looks when it is viewed!

Beyond this is the Intermediate to Advanced coding techniques that can transform how a given CMS outputs entirely. This often requires an innate understanding of how the system handles data, and may well require a non-coding designer to learn more then their fair share of coding. The options here for most UI designers are to either learn how to code in depth, learn the basics and stay away from the more advanced coding tricks, or hire someone else to do it for you! What a designer chooses is entirely up to them and there is no “wrong way” of doing it, as long as the site looks good and does what you want it to do!

Wire Frame FIRST!

Even before the Mockup comes the Wire Frame. What this looks like is entirely up to the one doing the design. Personally I work out a flow chart first, and as I work on this I doodle ideas into the corner of my notes. From this flow chart and doodles I make a rough wireframe that gives me an idea of the general layout and feel of the site.

Wire frames helps you to see the flow of the site, and to get an idea of what you are going to need in what areas. It is essential for the final mockup in the same way an outline is essential for a good research paper!

Once you have your wireframe (and notes!) then you can get to working on the mock up itself!

Mockups

A mockup is a graphic representation of what you want to site to look like. This includes the base body design (the elements that won’t change), the look of the individual pages and their content (Lores Ipsum fills in text nicely in case you aren’t sure of what to write), and what images are being used for each! Each individual page should have a mock up. Layer them all properly and name them (if the graphics program you have allows you to name your layers). This will reduce the wasted time from searching for a particular element later.

Mock ups should be of the final size, and take into consideration the different browser sizes. Yes there are some people who still use older monitors whose max resolution for websites are 600×800. Thankfully they are in the minority now, but you need to keep in mind that they do exist and keep the important information in the center. Anything non-essential to your site (advertisements, links outside of the site, etc) can be on the “wings”, but the main product and content needs to be easily accessible.

Make the Mock Up into Code

So now that you’ve decided on what to do, and how far into the code you are going to go, what’s next? Take the mock-up and write the base markup and CSS. I cannot stress enough how important this step is for keeping organized and focused on the final goal! Do all of your mark up first, make sure it works, try to break it to find out what happens, test the css in different browsers, get friends to test it in other browsers, do what ever you need to make sure the design code itself is functional.

Why? When something goes wrong later you can be certain, at least, that it’s not something in the design code that is malfunctioning! Also, this framework gives you the foundation you need for making Themes look good. This is what the site is suposed to look like after all, right?

After this, then you can get into the nitty gritty of dividing up the sections of a site into the parts needed as per how the CMS handles outputting. This part can be a little bit tricky depending on what your overall scheme for a site is and how you are going to handle it. Generally many sites rely on PHP in order to output. Understanding how PHP works will be a great help to any designer who finds themselves working with it.

W3Cschools section on PHP is a great place to start! There is also PHP.net which is more of a walk-through tand explains a lot more in plain language (until you get into the more technical stuff). Tizag has a lot of beginner tutorials and explanations. I found them to be slow, mostly because I was too excited to start with the basics. But I have to enforce, baby steps, learn the basics first. When you are looking at the CMS output code you’ll at least be able to read it! That is the first key to successfully tweaking the PHP output code!

Once you get the repeating sections done (header, footer, and sometimes but not always the sidebar(s)) you can work on how the content in the main content section will output. This can change from page to page. So keep in mind what your intents for each page are, and always refer back to your wireframes and mockups! I relate this habit to checking my algerbra notes during a test! By checking your mockups and wireframes you keep focused on the end result rather then get lost in the code.

By the time you get all the sections coded, it’s time to test it. (If you have a Windows Vista Machine I highly suggest you DO NOT try to install a virtual server unless you KNOW exactly what you are doing!) Best way to do this live is to have a mock-site set up, with a live database, et al. This way you can test it in a live environment.

It is highly suggested that one does NOT just upload the site to it’s final home for testing. This can cause problems on a number of levels! It can interfere with user experience, as well as cause problems with the site’s database in case something in the code is messed up. The Search engine spiders and bots could crawl your site and come up with poor reactions, and you wouldn’t even know it until later when you check your statistics! You could even drive traffic away from your site as well.

It’s a messy process. Find a place or way to test it before setting the site live.

Generally most computer OS (Operating Systems) can’t or won’t parse PHP. Windows NT was the server version of Windows and will display PHP. There are virtual servers you can set up and configure on your machine, but in such cases you should always back up the computer you will be using to do this in case something bad happens.

Once things are tested and working, it’s go-time. You should have a functional site that looks good and works!

More in this Series:
(tba as posted)

As I learn more about SEO and Plugins in general, I decided to trim down some of the multiple-use plugins for ones that were all inclusive. In short, fewer plugins helps the site run faster and load more quickly. So I want the power of many of these SEO Plugins without the need for so many downloads.

The Platinum SEO Pack offers this and is a pretty powerful tool. So far I like what it offers and have disabled other SEO Plugins. But I did discover something.

After visiting the Site Grader, it informed me that I had not site description or meta tag keywords. I double checked the settings of the Platium SEO Pack and everything looked fine. Then I checked my Pages. That’s when I realized what had happened.

Platinum SEO is set up so that the Blog page is your main Page. So all the settings for site description, etc, are attached to the Blog Page. Using WordPress as a CMS then requires you to do a few additional steps. You’ll need to hand-add the tags, keywords, and descriptions to each Page of the site.

Is this a major issue? Not for the majority of WordPress users who focus on blogging over CMS usage. For those using WordPress as a CMS, well it just requires a little extra work in order to make sure everything is set. As it stands it is best if you label, tag, describe, etc all your site’s Pages anyway. So this isn’t as big of a concern as it may seem.

Over all the Plugin works Great and I haven’t had any problem with it so far.

No tips, no tricks, no insider trader info, just facts. Common sense facts!

SEO. I’m sure plenty of you have heard of the term. Even better some of you may know what it is and how to go about doing it. Some may only know the “old way” that most search engines are rejecting for better and more exacting options. For those that don’t read on. For those that do skip down a bit.

What is SEO?

SEO is a short form acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”. What this is or does, is offer the search engines information to try and get your site to the top of the lists. Most search engines have different algorithms for trying to find the best sites that match the terms being searched for and then return that list to the end user. Knowing the tricks of these algorithms is what SEO is all about.. or was.

Yes I said was.

Many of the Search engines are changing their tactics. Why is that? Spam, spam-ad-sites, scam sites, people who abused the system in order to get to the top of the charts and then shared those tricks for money. Sure business is about money, but not about dishonesty. Dishonest business eventually get caught and go under! Don’t be one of them and you’ll do just fine!

No really!

Changing Winds, New Practices

So how is SEO changing? You want to know the trick to it do you? Sorry there is no real trick because the search engines and their programmers are just getting smarter. The key to ranking high and ranking well is really attached to content.

Content may be “King” and design “Queen” but the rest of the court has come into their own and are being considered as a way to rate your sites. Yep you heard me. It is about the network you’ve developed and how it relates to your content.

No, not social media. That’s a part of it, to be sure, but it isn’t the end of it. It is about how your content, meta tags, titles (header, links, etc), image description, and the other aspects of web usability all interlink into your end-user’s experience. No kidding.

End-User is my word for ‘God’

Okay it isn’t actually, but I think I got my point across whether your initial reaction is a knee-jerk “WHAT! Blasphemous!” or a hearty chuckle as you get the “joke”. It is about what the End User wants and how they interact with your web site. The key to good SEO is about what you are offering to the greater whole, and how relevant it is to what the end-user has asked the search engines to find for them.

How many times have you written in a search engine for something and found…, nothing. Or Ultimate Crap! (echos like a bad horror movie) Or what’s worse, you end up with sites that try to sell you stuff in that patented single column, center-justified, giant RED LETTERS!!!!!!! With lots of little exclamation marks! All of the text talking about how awesome their product is and how it will change your life!!

Crap. You know it and I know it but they were “Optimized” for the search engines to find. So the search engines got sick of it, got working on it, and got smart, real smart.

You see each search engines for the most part (sans a few I may not know) are a business in and of themselves. Google stock is actually traded! Their business relies on satisfying the end-user. You, me, and everyone else that uses search engines to find what we are looking for online.

So it isn’t about “what is the newest trick”. Good, solid SEO is about the correct procedures to follow as well as what NOT to do!

DO

• Meta Tags:Meta tags may not have the same importance or weight they did years ago, but they are still important in declaring what your document is about. Pick a handful, not too many, and avoid repeating words.
• Titles Tag: Use these as often as you can. Where ever they need to be use in an area that you have content. This helps to describe what it is the content is about, be it a link, and image, or other media!
• Links: Popularity and links go hand in hand. Whether is it because of negative feed back (ie. people saying ‘Oh wow take a look at THIS crap!’) or positive feedback (ie. ‘Wow how cool and useful this is! Check it out!’) people will link to your site. This is noticed by search engines. The more important the site that links to yours, the more relevant a site that links to yours, the better your chances at gaining page rank!
• Link Relevance: Only link to, or try to garner links from, sites relevant to your own. It is a logic pattern that improves your ranking. A search engine looks at irrelevant links as someone would look at a dog for sale in a food store. It makes no sense to them.
• Content: What is your site about? Is is a broad beast with a lot of information (about.com), or is is a specific creature with refined tastes and requirements (elfwood.com). Perhaps it’s a hybrid of both (tutorial sites that have strict requirements), or a community site based around one topic (ConceptArt.org).
• ** Notice that most of the sites I’ve listed here are also art-related… because my content is primarily art-related. If my site were more tech-centered I might link to Wired, or the Food Network site were I making a more food-centric site.
• Use of Robots.txt: ‘Nofollow’ and ‘follow’ rules help the sites know what pages to crawl. This can be used smartly to limit the amount of repetitive links, or to offer the engines a broader range to crawl through your site. If you have a “links” page with a LOT of out going links, so much so that it is hurting your site, try this: make it a “nofollow” and then blog about some of these sites instead. This way your links get their attention but the engines get CONTENT.
• Write: Yes write new content. If you site is very static (basic art gallery styled site) add a “professional twitter feed”, or if you don’t want to add a blog to your site, grab a free one from any of the various providers and have it’s rss feed show up on your site as a “news” section.
• Giving: Whether it’s a blog entry, a review of someone else’s product, or a partnership link, share the love. The links given out to others may reciprocate links back to you. In the Blogosphere, often when an author finds out he’s been written about, they may write about you or make a note in their journals about the article. People love attention! Give them some love!

DO NOT

• Meta Tags: No stuffing meta tags in your header. Don’t use the same word over and over again in different forms, spellings, or formats. That will penalize you!
• No Link Farms: DO NOT become a link farm! Do not link to everything in the world, especially if it doesn’t relate to your site content! This reduces the power of your out-going links, and makes you look like a link farm to search engines.
• No Link Farmers: Like Link-Farming do NOT farm for links. It is spam, it annoys people, and eventually leads to people not believing your authority or authenticity!
• Link Relevance: I cannot stress this enough. Do NOT link to that which has no relevance to your site. Don’t bother with links from sites that are not Relevant to your site.
• Out-links-In: In other words what links to your site and from where? Confused? Okay, in short the engines also look at where links are coming from that point to your site! So those links that are relevance are equally as important!

Simplify if you can. Keep the main links on a front page to between 3 and 6 if at all possible.

• Content: Do not fill a site with dirbble, crap, or otherwise un-useful, unhelpful tripe. Be mindful of the focus of a site and try to keep that focus fresh in your mind always as it is updated.
• Affiliate Links: Are they hurting your rankings? What you didn’t know they could hurt your rankings? It really depends on the search engine you are optimizing a site for… yes the same way a designer must keep in mind different browser types. Ironic? I think so. Go read the different engines’ policies.
• Masking links: Some Browsers penalize your site for having affiliate links. In some cases people offer you ways to “get around this issue” by masking the links. There are a number of ways to do this, but can in the long run hurt your site. So I suggest that folks do not do this. See above. I would suggest limiting the links instead to the highest payouts, or those that are specifically relevant to your site.

Shocked?

I hope not. This is very common sense. People want content. They want to learn or share that content if they are impressed by it. So write good content and as your popularity grows so too will your engine rankings. Give something back to the net then just spam. The more focused the site the better off you are.

If you find out that you are interested in a lot of different things, take the risk to start a blog, a second, or third site based on these other hobbies. Link to them from your other sites. Just again, don’t over do it.

Content in moderation that educates rather then entices. Don’t sell, share. ~ Drakenhart

Surfing around the net I discovered a difference in philosophy on, of all things, Navigation links. So why write an article about it?

Well for the completely clueless, navigation links are the hyper links (short-form: links) in say a header menu, a side-bar menu, or a footer menu. In fact they can show up anywhere, even inside a blog post, or website page. These take you to important areas, or areas that a designer/ site owner want to draw your attention and have you visit.

Navigation links are honestly vital to any website. I mean otherwise how would people get to the different sections of you web-site? Seriously. Simple answer is they wouldn’t because generally they wouldn’t know the other portions of the site even existed.

Generally navigation depends on the culture, country, and eye-flow of a particular group of people. No joke. The Japanese and Chinese do not read their magazines, nor do they write their alphabet, the same way much of the “European” countries do. In fact culture has a lot to do with site design in general, but more on that later.

So, what are “Good” navigation links?

It seems that WordPress feels that “Good Navigation Links” belong to the side or on the bottom. Buh?

Every Web Site Design reference I find points to Header (in the top of the site) or side-bar links. Those references that offer insight into designing for the end-user in mind (very important aspect most people forget to do – keep the end user in mind), point out that culture and how their are raised to read their print materials should be kept in mind when designing a site’s navigation.

Print material? Maybe WordPress Codex has something in their ideal?

Huh?

Look at any magazine, newspaper, poster, postcard, or more and you’ll see what I mean.

Where is the index to a newspaper? What portion do you look at to find where the job section is located? The bottom.

Check out magazines. How do they list their table of contents? Side-bars, or double columns. This leaves room for more advertisements in the table of contents area.

Now go grab a manga, and not an American Knock-off manga. If you can’t find one of them, try to find any real Japanese magazine. Not only are they laid out different, but their table of contents are different as well.

But only slightly! They still have the side menus. Food for thought.

So What makes for Good Navigation?

It comes down to content and what is the site’s main focus? Is it a blog or a static site? Is it s static site with a blog? Then you have the concept of what kind of culture are you catering to and how have their populations been raised when it comes to media that is read?

Generally the top, “header”, navigation has been around long enough that far too many people are used to it. So one should’t just dismiss them entirely. I would suggest using them for static sites mostly. This is one of the key items that helps gives a web-site (rather then a blogging site) it’s feel.

Side-menus will never go out of style. People of all culutres are used to using them in various forms.

If you are using a Blog, and you want to give it that quality of a newspaper or a more text-oriented feel, go with a bottom menu. Just beware that a lot of users may not understand where your navigation links are located and get lost in your site. This is where the rest of the site’s design should help by drawing the eye towards your links.

Over all, I would highly recommend using only two of the three options. In many ways less is more. Unless you are building a site that will have a lot of links (search engines, news sites, etc, for example), you don’t want to confuse you end-user with too many links or HUGE menus.

End Note

Which brings me to another concept, simplifying your navigation menus. It is an easier read for the end user if you have 7 or fewer main links in you primary navigation menu.

If there is a lot of important information, you may wish to add a footer menu, and make the links smaller. Often links to legal references, policies, faq’s, extra contact link, job offers and the like can be found in footer menus. But since they are at the bottom most often they don’t catch the eye and detract from a site’s overall design.

So it is highly recommended that when developing navigation links you take into consideration what you can group together under a specific link.

Review

So in the K.I.S.S. method here is a brief list of what one should keep in mind when designing navigation menus.

• Theme: Blog or Static site?
• End User Culture
• Simplify Links: Grouping

Enjoy!

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