Smashing Magazine is currently taking a closer look at blog designs, then finding out what works and what doesn’t across fifty of the most popular blogs according to Technorati.

The Smashing team will likely use the results from thirty design problems that are encountered in every day design, and wants to pose solutions to them.  Today, the first article of possibly many in the series on blog design was published, with the following results found on those blogs.

It is noted that the results should not be used to design your blog, but simply represents the number of blogs that are using those examples in their design.

Some of the findings are listed below.

• large blogs require a multi-column layout solution (usually 3 columns suffice) (58%);
• layouts are usually centered (94%),
• layouts usually have a fixed weight (px-based) (92%),
• the width of the fixed layout varies between 951 and 1000px (56%),
• 58% of the overall site layout is used to display the main content,
• CSS-layouts are used (90%),

If you’re new to blogging, this is a brief introduction into what you’ll be dealing with on a daily basis - the blog post.  In its simplest form, the blog post serves as the preferred communication method between a blogger and the reader, the place where content is stored.  No matter what type of blog platform or theme you are using, the basic post likely looks like the one shown in the image. 

Main Elements of a Post
[Click on image to see larger version]

The post itself is quite complex, with text that may have taken a few hours to produce, and further time to follow up with - approving and replying to comments and editing the post at a later date with new information.  Each post can provide immense help to those looking for the information, and once you harness the power of language, you will be able to convey your point across to nearly any audience.

What’s Inside Each Post

Note: This guide follows the default layout of posts.

Near the top of each and every post, there is a Title, which typically provides a brief thesis statement about what the post is about before the reader even enters the main content.  Below this, there is the Post Date, which defines the date (and sometimes time) when the post was published, primarily used for archive and reader purposes - is this information still relevant?

Often, but not always, the Post Author and brief information about the author is placed at the top or, alternately, at the bottom of the post.  In addition, Categories and/or tags are listed, which further helps categorize the post and the insight that it provides to readers.

The largest parts of each post are, of course, the Post Content and Comments area.  In this area, all communication between the post author and readers takes place, serving nearly ninety percent of the purpose of a blog.

What I didn’t mention in depth are the comments and trackbacks (links back to the post from others) area, which may be split, depending on your theme and/or blog system.  These areas generally represent some of the similar elements that the main post does - a comment Gravatar (image representing the commenter, link/name of responder, time they published the comment, and finally, the comment, or short excerpt if it is in the form of a trackback.

Final Thoughts

Now, any blog can contain many more areas than those listed - social bookmarking links, commenting plugins (like SezWho, shown above), or other features, which may add up to a more bloated commenting process for readers.  

In either instance, whether you prefer a straightforward experience for your readers or one that adds plugins and tools to extend your post into other networks, the post and comments area hold enormous significance on your blog.

As a basic introduction to the post area for beginners, hopefully this post has aided you.

Everyone makes mistakes, some more than others, but it is all human nature - no one is perfect.  When you chose to start a blog, you likely figured that it wouldn’t be as much work as others made it out to be, that you would quickly rise to fame and churn out those posts on a daily basis.  While this isn’t my first blog, I did make some mistakes that I regret to this day.

Finding the time to blog is one of the most overused excuses bloggers write on their blogs, and may either means that they really don’t have the time, which in most cases, means that there are other events that take precedence over the task of blogging, or they have found that blogging isn’t the right thing for them to do, and they have called it quits.

I believe that I asked this question before, but I would like to reopen it again with further discussion, after all, quite some time has passed.

One of the biggest problems I faced when I started this blog was not taking it in the right direction.  While I had planned extensively before creating the blog, I didn’t think about what visitors were really looking for, and therefore didn’t produce enough content in the initial three months or so, leading to a total of only three to six posts by the time December and January rolled around (blog was started in mid-October).

While I have (for the most part) been able to recover from that costly mistake on my part, what mistakes have you made in the process of starting a blog?