5 Must Have Features in the Blog Sidebar
People ask me a lot of questions related to blog designs. Sometimes they are the same questions, while other time they are unique in their own sense of ways. But this is a question that surprisingly no one has asked. But I am going to mention it anyways because I think it is important.
In my opinion, there are 3 main components in a blog design. Set up of your header, sidebar and how well it goes along with your content, and organization of the site.
Believe it or not, but you can actually use sidebar of your blog to display alot of things that you can’t display on the content area. Now I will list some of the must have features in the blog sidebar that you should know.
Must Have Features in a Blog Sidebar
- Subscribe Area – Subscribe Area, or RSS Button should be the most prominent area of your sidebar. This should be placed towards the top if not the very top. Susbscribe button go well in the sidebar rather than any other parts of the design.
- Categories – Categories is a most essential part that should go in the sidebar. The main reason is, because categories doesn’t work anywhere else prominent automatically. If you try placing them in header, you are limited with space. Also, you have to enter them manually, so the best place is the sidebar. You can’t put your categories in the footer because a lot of users like to view content through categories. It is easier for them to find the related topics that they are looking for. Also, you need to link to your categories, because some people don’t link to them at all on the page. This is one of the ways you tell the Search Engine, categories exist, so they can get some Pagerank as well.
- Search Button – Search is another important feature that can potentially go in the sidebar, if you have no where else to put it. Search bar is necessary on all blogs because it allows users to find everything much quicker.
- Recent Posts – Believe it or not, but I consider recent posts to be very important. Specially on blogs that are active, usually writes daily, if not multiple times a day. Because a good number of posts you should display on your blog is about 5 in my opinion. If you are writing more than one post a day, your post for this week will be on the second page within the week. You still want your readers to see that. Include the recent posts on your sidebar. Also, so for sites that doesn’t indexed very quickly, can have the bot see it at some point in time. Also, users who didn’t visit your blog for a few days because they were busy. Now they want to check out the posts, it is much easier by just looking at the titles of the post in recent posts to decide which one to read.
- Blogroll / Links – Link to your other projects, your friends should usually go in the sidebar as well. Some people choose to put those in the footer. I don’t see why. Not many people will see them. If you want some of your other sites to get some exposure, then put it on the sidebar, so everyone can see it. Also, I am sure if you are selling those advertising space, your sponsors don’t want you to put those in the footer either.
Having said the above, I rest my list of the must have features. But you need to understand that sidebar can contain a lot more than that. It is a personal choice of what you put and which order you put it in. Different blogs have different features in their sidebar. There are so much more that you can incorporate into your sidebar.
Possible features for the sidebar
- Blog Ads
- Top commentators
- Recent Comments
- Popular Posts
- Donation Button
- Stats (Site validation, and more…)
- Photos from Flickr, or from your gallery.
- Polls
- Author Biography
- Wish list
- Your hot product (Like Pimp My Blog)
- Link to Wordpress and Other credentials
- Link to your social profiles
- Mybloglog recent readers
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
Ahh, I have em all
I also like Top Commentator for a bit of link love and encouragement for comments, as well as any specialty or free thing that u must sign up to the newsletter for
I don’t really understand why footer is often dismissed as boring area.
Anyone who reads post or simply scrolls to get general impression about site is going to hit footer. I think it should at least have navigation and there is no reason to limit it to that.
It is very simple. You try putting a product that you want to promote in the footer. And then put the same product towards the top in the header. How many of your readers actually scroll down the whole page… I am sure there is no one who have 0 bounce rate … people clicked on your website and realized o wrong site. X out… so they didn’t get to see the footer. But they did see the top right hand corner header and sidebar.
Unless you have stats to prove otherwise, I will go with this one because I have experienced it.
I obviously didn’t mean that footer is best area ever. But that’s not the reason to discard and ignore it.
I also have very little faith (and stats) that people (bouncers or not) have patience to look through 3-4 pages long sidebar lots of blogs are so fond of.
Anyway I am no expert, just personal opinion.
Everyone have their own personal opinions and their own choices that they make. I personally think footer is not one of the main components of the design. But thats just me.
Have all of them
A good basic requirements list!
A subscription image for both RSS and email subscription is easily the most important. You want to bring people back to your blog so getting subscribers is going towards the right direction.
Despite your reasons are valid, i don’t thing that a “recent posts” is a thing we should use… at least not on the front page. i think that if to be used, the widget should be shown when some one clicks on a post to read. This will make easy for the reader to go to another post instead of clicking back
hmm interesting. Depends on what type of blog you are using. If you use a magazine style theme, you have to use recent post. You can’t get by it. Even with normal blogs, many bloggers who weren’t using it are now beginning to use it. The advantages are there, when people see it, they take a jump on it.
I wonder why I didnt think of this post idea before but you couldn’t have said it better. Great post as usual. I think the RSS and the Search bar are very critical so I’m glad you mentioned that.
Nice list for someone starting a blog. Too bad that top commenters is widget driven.
If you follow my tutorial on adding dynamic sidebar to wordpress, you can add it in your sidebar and not ruin the rest of your sidebar.
nice list.. You have executed each and every point in depth..
thanks a lot
regards,
Abdul
I don’t see this in your list, so I’ll add it here. I think a monthly archive of your posts on your sidebar is also essential. While old content may not be useful for all, those that want access to it could easily do if there was a monthly archive.
No, I didn’t miss it. I intentionally didn’t add it. Because I have already emphasized in my past posts that blogs should have a separate archive page. You can have an archive list in your sidebar and as your blog grows, it gets impossible to organize them. Therefore to eliminate the problem from start, you keep them in a separate page
Agree mostly with you. However, I feel that blogroll or links may not be a must. Recent posts/Subscribe links should be at the top for sure. I feel that search should be part of the header and not sidebar? May be it’s just my thought.
Recent posts play a huge role in reducing bounce rate. I experienced this positive behavior of readers after I moved my recent posts widget way up.
Cheers,
Ajith
As you see, I don’t have my search button on the sidebar. Really search is good any where as long as it is at the top
I agree with you on the recent posts
Great post. I have everything from your initial list although my RSS subscriber options are above my sidebar.
I also have four small ads at the top of the left sidebar, above the fold of course.
hehe thats usual. I just didn’t think it was a must for all blog.
I think the Top Commentator widget is also a must to encourage your visitors to leave some comment.
You gotta have the RSS sub options as well.
[...] Balkhis – Syed mentioned 5 Must Have Features In A Sidebar and I completely agree with him on all the [...]
I’ll have to agree that those are some pretty good features to have. I am seeing more folks use the footer for more and more features too, but the one’s you laid out are perfect for the sidebar.
I also look for the popular posts on the sidebar also with the top commentator widget. Categories is not important for me, but the Blog Archive does.
Yep Popular Posts could be also very useful for blog readers.
Blogroll / links is not important for those have only 1 site.
I would say Top commentator is quite important to reward your reader, it push your reader to make more comment if they want to expose in the first 10 commentator list.
Top bad that I have problem with my commentator widget, when i use it, my template run out of shape. =.=”
Maybe you will be the next pimp my blog winner. Subscribe to my email and try your luck. If you are then I will add a top commentator box on your site
I feel that you should also have the Topc feature in the sidebar. It does encourage traffic.
Those are some very good points to consider, but I dont see that having a blogroll is that important of an issue, not as much as categories, subscription, recent posts and search, which i agree are very important to display prominently.