I’m in the middle of revamping this blog and one of the main problems i face is choosing to go with a magazine theme or just leave it the way it is – as a traditional blog where there are no ‘read more’ links.
Up until now i’ve never been a fan of magazine themes on personal blogs, but i’m slowly warming to them. Advantages of a magazine theme?
- More images, so more pleasing on the eye.
- Looks more symmetrical so again it’s more pleasing on the eye.
- You can predict the size of the frontpage because all posts are the same length, same size pictures – therefore you can optimize loading time /SEO.
- Can fit more content / posts on homepage
Disadvantages of magazine theme?
- People have to click the ‘read more’ link to read the entire post – so it requires more effort on their part.
- Page loads increase, which can be seen as a good or bad thing i suppose.
- Requires more work on my part – using thumbnails, coming up with catchy opening lines to grab attention and make you read on etc…
I have to say i’m leaning towards the magazine type style for this new design mainly because it looks better and it will force me in to writing better. For example on theleavingcert.com, i know the title of the post must be interesting. The opening sentence must also be interesting & the thumbnail image must also grab attention, otherwise people won’t bother clicking on the ‘read more’ link.
Although i’m leaning towards the magazine style, there are very few existing magazine themes which i like, so i’ll probably have to pick the best of a bad lot and then spend a lot of time modifying it.
