Today's challenge in the 31 Day Blog Challenge is to de-clutter my blog side bar.
This is something I have been aware of for some time. Feedback about the appearance of my blog, including the sidebar resulted in changing my template a couple of weeks ago to make the blog look more spacious.
It appears that it is really important to have certain resources on your side bar such as a RSS feed (email and reader) and search facility. The explanation about how to make a comment came about after a discussion about making comments on a blog. Comments on a blog are really important to generate networking and discussion, so I want to do all I can to encourage people to leave comments. This information will hopefully help newbies to feel confident about leaving a comment. I also include a quiz because I read somewhere that it is a good way to hook in readers - sorry, I cannot remember the reference for that.
I like to keep a list of my latest publications, such as they are, to show people what I am currently researching. I keep changing my mind about my blog roll- the list of blogs that I am currently reading. At first I deleted it because I thought it was adding to the clutter. But I reinstated it because I felt it was important to disseminate information about some of the blogs that are helpful to me.
I did have a Twitter roll - an update of what I had just said on Twitter. But I have deleted that because Twitter does not play a great part in my online life. I love having a link to Flickr, which is really there for my friends and family's benefit.
The information about the creative commons license that is attached to this blog is to inform people about how to use the information I post. It should make it quite clear that I am extremely happy for people to use the material on this blog as long as it is appropriately attributed to me.
So cut a long story sort, I am reasonably happy with how the sidebar looks. What do you think? Would you recommend any changes?
Image: 'I love clutter' Karl Sinfield
www.flickr.com/photos/54774885@N00/238419364
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