A Brand New Way to Format Your Blog

As my avid readers (yeah right) know, a new plainBETA is coming. Furthermore, I have the logo almost ready.

I now have the layout sketched out on paper, and I have even started with some of the images as well as the coding!
Pretty cool huh?

So what does that have to do with y’all?

Well, I’d like to propose something new in the way of blog layouts. I have never seen it done, but I think it could be quite effective. But before I tell you what I am proposing, let me explain the purpose of a blog layout.

The purpose of a blog layout is to drive people further into your blog.

Every bit of your blog layout should be designed in such a way so your visitors will be driven further and further into your blog. By doing so, you’re blog is more likely to increase in RSS subscribers, visitors, etc.

Everyone already wants more visitors, so I won’t bother trying to convince y’all that you should increase your readership.

Now, just about all blogs have four of the same components - a header, a spot for content, a sidebar, and a footer. There are other components, but they are not important right now. Many blogs have one sidebar (like Blogtrepreneur), but some blogs have more than one sidebar (like Pro Blog Design).

A sidebar’s purpose is boundless - if you can think of it, you can probably put it in your sidebar.
The more common elements of a blog’s sidebar are things like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, RSS links, Ads, and blogrolls.
Obviously, the more sidebars you have, the more elements you can put on your web site.

So - what am I proposing?
Note: If you get confused” - educate yourself on the .php files of Wordpress here and here.

Well, index.php would have the navigation across the top, then the header (including the logo and tagline), then the content and two sidebars, and then the footer.
content.php would be 510px wide and then the two sidebars would be about 200px wide each. Then throw in some padding, and the width would fit on all 1024×768px screens.

Click for actual size

If you know much about web site design (particularly blog design), then that isn’t very wide. (Example) While there is nothing wrong with that, I didn’t quite want my blog’s content to be that narrow - but I wanted two sidebars.
So I had a dilemma.
I wanted two sidebars that were 200px wide, but I wanted the content to be the main focus.
That is when I had an idea.
I could make the index.php content 510px wide with the two sidebars like I wanted - and have the single.php sport a single sidebar - and not have as much content there.

Click for actual size

The index.php sidebar will contain a ’sign up to my RSS Feed’ section, Recent Posts, Recent Comments, some affiliate ads, some Google ads, a BlogRush widget, and then an empty space.

The single.php sidebar will contain Related Posts, Recent comments, some affiliate ads, some Google ads, and then an empy spot that might contain a BlogRush widget.
Then, between the post and the comments will be ‘Subscribe to my RSS Feed,’ E-Mail this Post, Printable Version, Random Post, and Social Networking Icons.

(Oh, and the footer shall contain a Featured Article link, my most popular posts, and an ‘About Me.’)

So what does that do?
It allows me to display as much relative information as possible to drive readers into my blog.
If someone is on the index.php page - then I don’t really know what they’re looking for.
But, if someone reading a post, I know what they’re interested in. So I’m trying to give them as much information about that post as possible.

I believe that set-up accomplishes those goals. (If you can understand what I just said…)

What do you think?