The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

This Is The First Guest Post!
Hi everybody, I’m currently swanning around Europe with loads of people, so am leaving you in capable hands of a bunch of guestposters. The first is from somebody who has had the distinct pleasure of seeing me naked, the gorgeous Han. Enjoy!

Rhys’s recent redesign is particularly web 2.0 wouldn’t you agree? I like to think eruanna.net is pretty web 2.0 too! I’ve decided to write about web 2.0 and how applying the principals of this ‘new craze’ to your blog.

I’m going to start by explaining web 2.0. Essentially all it is is a marketing buzz word originally coined by O’Reilly. If your really interested in web 2.0 I suggest you read that article, I could probably recite it to you but that’s because I’ve written essays about it for uni! You could also read the Wikipedia Definition which is broken down into handy subsections. Really all we’re looking at here is the design concepts of web 2.0 and not how it all came about.

White Space
White Space in my opinion is one of the most useful things you have in your design repertoire and its used to great advantage in web 2.0. If your writing a blog post your going to space it out aren’t you?! If you didn’t divide posts up like I’m doing now no one would read it would they, you certainly wouldn’t! So why not use this simple idea in your blogs layout. Lets take a look at a good use of white space bloggingpro.com. I want you to look at the sidebar advertising, clean and simple, it doesn’t over power you. Why is that do you think?

Its well padded, the blog flux ad isn’t massive messing up the colour scheme. Similarly the product ads have padding between them and the left hand column. The links in the left hand column have sufficient spacing above and below them to let you read them quickly and without straining to see them. Remember white space isn’t necessarily white!

How to improve your ‘White Space’

• Give your content room to breathe, make your columns 10px or more wider than the actual content
• Use the line-height property in text. I usually use it in my posts to ensure maximum readability.
• Use padding, pad out images and different sections of your site – not everything has to be visible when someone first visits your site, give them something interesting to find when they scroll down, prioritise your sidebar content

Logo
A logo doesn’t have to be an image, but it seems most sites now have a little image to represent themselves somewhere in their site, I’ve recently taken on a speech bubble which I’ve hidden in various parts of my site. You can also use a custom font as your logo, I recommend dafont.com for all your font needs but I warn you – its addictive!

Gradients
Gradients can be used as backgrounds for the main page or to give a 3D effect to headers and Navigation. If you love gradients as much as I do I really think you should see this! Gradients can even be made with textures to give an even cooler effect.

Rounded Corners
I think this one was pretty obviously a web 2.0 feature! How to make rounded corners in images and so far the only rounded corners for content I’ve found that works is Spiffy Corners

‘Ground’ Reflections
Apple have given/taken a lot of ideas to web 2.0, but I think the biggest one is Ground Reflections. If your featuring a product in a post or just want to make an image more interesting try out this effect. It took me a while but I finally found a tutorial for this!

Colours
Every blog needs a colour scheme that all blends together nicely, I recommend you give colourlovers.com a try, they have some amazing pallets there! Or have a look at some of mine.

Sun Rays
A ray of sunshine makes everything seem better doesn’t it!? A bit of text with a ray of sunshine behind it could make your blog a better place.

I keep thinking of more and more ideas for web 2.0 to write about but I think I’ll leave some for you to work out for yourself. One thing thats common to web 2.0 sites is simplicity and I think thats something to remember when creating a blog.