New Blogzine Posts

There is a reason I pay for a physical copy of Wired every month. The text for all their articles are posted online, absolutely free. Yet I shell out $3 every few weeks for a hard copy. Why?

Blog posts are traditionally bland. There is a header, followed about a lot of
text. Occasionally, an image or quote will break things up a bit- but that is about it. Magazines like Wired get it right- they combine stylized text with unique images. Why can't blog posts do the same?

I have always believed that blog posts should be custom. Sure, not every site can pull this off- if a site like GigaOM tried to do it, they would drive themselves crazy. However, with only a few long blog posts a month (or every few months), using a custom design for each page on my site is much more manageable.

I was trying to redesign my blog layout a bit, to make it a bit more interesting. Not much you can do with a header and some text, though. About halfway through, I gave up and headed to Smashing Magazine for inspiration. It just so happened that Smashing Magazine posted an article called “The death of the boring blog post?” The article talks about creating custom layouts for each of your blog posts- “Does a blog post about kittens deserve the same layout as one about CSS hacks?”

I have been meaning to do this since I first saw Dustin Curtis’ site, but never got around to it. It always seemed like too much of a hassle to set up, and too much work to generate new layouts every time. In addition, my site layout wasn't really set up for it- most sites that use this approach take over the whole website, something that did not work for me.

However, this practice is certainly going to become popular in the future, so I figured I might as well get a head start on it. Blogs are just too easy to set up these days- anyone can be a blogger in a few minutes. In the future, it is going to take a lot more work to get noticed.

There was a study a few years ago that said 40% of what we say in emails is misunderstood. With just text, we lose things like voice tone and gestures. Blog posts are the same way- it is not always easy to express yourself with just words. Using custom layouts can help set the mood for the post, in a way that a generic layout cannot.

So, here we go. Will it last? Who knows- these layouts certainly take a lot more work than normal blog posts. However, since I started this project, I have found that I am much more inspired to work on blog posts. Now, rather than just writing, I get to design and code. I get to do things I couldn’t normally do with just text.

One thing I will say- I definitely need practice. Maybe it's just the theme I chose for this particular post, but my "Special Blog Posts" have a lot of room for improvement. But I guess that is the point, huh? Practice.

Let me know what you think,

Gregory