Making room for better things

There are better things to put on your blog than a long archive list. Why show each post in the current month? Your readers can scroll through your actual posts quite easily. Collapse that thing now!

Then add the new Follow Me widget on Blogger or something similar on other blogging platforms. This is a great way to spark blog popularity. Place it quite high in your sidebar as demonstrated right here. Your widget will look something like this:

Everyone in the B.A.D. Challenge, as you visit each other, look for a way to follow and add yourself to this list. On Blogger blogs, you'll see that all the blogs you follow now appear at the bottom of your dashboards. It's a fast and handy way to see if anyone has posted something new. How many of you knew that?

Time to collapse

No, not from the efforts of daily blogging. What I mean is collapse your archive. Look at that long mess in your blog sidebar. Is anyone really going to click on your daily posts from this month? Not likely when they can just scroll down the page.

First go to Layout in Blogger, and click on edit in the archive gadget. Then choose either Flat List or Drop-down Menu. Immediately, you will see a nice short list or a nice little box. That frees up column space for much more important information that your reader might actually use and enjoy.

Do it. Right now. Collapse your archive.

Sidebar Clutter

You've spiffied up your blog and now have all kinds of helpful and attractive gadgets in your sidebar. This is a good thing. Unless your sidebars are now so cluttered that your readerss can't find what they're looking for.

Visual clutter quickly happens, especially as your blog hosts add all kinds of fancy new gadgets for you to try. It doesn't mean you have to use them all, or that they are even good for you blog. For example, preview posts from other blogs sometimes simply don't support your mission. Think about whether you really need that information to make your blog better.

What about your label list? Do you have a nice, concise group of categories you shovel each post into, or is your list a mile long with one post in each unique category? Get rid of it, if so. Those post labels mean nothing to your or your readers.

Also look at your archive gadget. Is it showing daily post titles for the current month? Collapse it, so that only the months are listed. Much neater and will free up column room for a more important addition.

In Blogger, you will make these changes in the Layout section. Go now and tweak a bit, so that your blog is more attractive and easier to maneuver.