Before you choose a blog template, consider form and function. Keep in mind that the Web is evolving all the time and we are always experimenting with new ways to display our content. And remember that content is king. The blog design is there to enhance your content, to provide a good experience to your readers and to convey what your brand/blog stands for.

Based on my experience and what I see in the blogosphere as of autumn 2009, I feel that:

1. Pictures sell. The trend is to go with bigger images. Aim for 500 pixels in width.
2. The the blog is becoming the hub of your social media activities. The blog layout is morphing and designers are experimenting with different options. There are no clear winner at this point. The multimedia blog template is an option. But clearly, we look for what will replace the magazine layout and the classic blog layout for your home page.
3. Make sure to display where to find you on other social media sites. Put a link to your Flickr and You tube account, a Follow me on Twitter link or a Twitter widget. The Fan box from Facebook works well to grow your fan base. You must leverage your participation in social networking sites.
4. Make sure your posts display well in Facebook when people add the link to their profile. You want to show the title, show the contextual picture and display the first sentences of your post. Click here for explanations. Any blogger should leverage the power of popular social networking sites to grow their traffic.
5. Assume that your readers use a screen resolution of at least 1024×768. On at my At Home blog, I get less than 2% of my readers with a 800×600 screen resolution or lower.
6. If you still prefer the classic blog layout (no harm in that), opt for a 2-column design since it allows your content to breathe. Allow a content column of 500 pixels or more to publish big pictures and properly embed You Tube videos. To give you an idea, the white section of my blog measures 1002 pixels in width.
7. If you publish many posts per week, display blog excerpts on your home page. This way, if a reader is not interested by the first post, you may grab his or her attention with the second or third post.

Make your Image Google-friendly

Do not forget to fill a short description of what the picture represents, think of describing the scene on the ALT attribute of the image. I am telling you, it makes a huge difference. As a bonus, putting ALT attribute helps on accessibility.

+ photo: Aperture multimedia blog template from WooThemes

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We installed BackType Connect to integrate related Twitter conversations into the post comments. It is not hard to do by yourself. Adding a plugin in WordPress usually works like a charm.

Since we are perfectionists, I asked my tech guy to fine-tune a few things that required his programming skills. One thing, Jerome did what to add the @ character before the username of every tweet (see the arrow on the image). This way, it is easier for you to notice that the comment originated from Twitter.

If you are a blogger, you probably notice that comments on blogs are broken. They are because many people say they like your post on Facebook or share their opinions about your posts on other social networks. I personally concentrate my efforts on Twitter and Facebook. Since Facebook is a closed network, we cannot export the comments and likes.  For Twitter, you can retrieve the relevant tweets. On tools that enable you to do this is BackType Connect that works for WordPress blogs.

Besides Twitter, your can include comments from Digg, FriendFeed, Reddit and Hacker News. Here is a small description from the information BackType is gathering per social networks.

• Twitter – whenever someone tweets one of your posts
• FriendFeed – whenever someone comments on an entry for one of your posts
• Digg – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Reddit – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Hacker News – whenever someone comments on a submission for one of your posts
• Other Blogs – whenever someone comments on a post that links to one of yours (I do not recommend this option)

For my blogs, I feel that only tweets are making sense. Analyze what it is best for you. There are a few preferences amongst which I choose to:

• Not include retweets with no additional comment
• Do not include connected conversations from my own blog
• Mix comments by time stamp. Since I believe in the life stream effect, I feel it is easier for people to follow conversations as they happen. The other option is to separate the tweets from the blog comments.

The only thing I wish there was available is to eliminate my own tweets. Since I promote every post on Twitter, I feel it adds noise.

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I had a great time this weekend at WordCamp Montreal. The conversation with the founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg was inspiring and calming. Matt was really zen while he answered questions from the crowd. In the after-talk, many people pointed out to me his soothing voice. Amongst other things, Matt shares the core value of his company. To give you an idea, check out this short interviewed realized by my friend Christian Aubry.

About Our Presentation

I like going to this type of conference because you always get back from them with some ideas. Several talks gave me food for thought. Plus there is the fact that being a speaker forced me to reflect on my blog design and features. Jerome Paradis and I talked about my migration from subText to Wordpress.

We devised the presentation to highlight the perspective of the blogger and the preoccupations of the developer. I am happy because people seemed to appreciate that duality. I made the envy of a few bloggers to have free access to such a talented developer. Without Jerome, I would have never been able to have made this transition as perfectly as he did.

Now that I migrated to WordPress, I can envision the future. What to do next? I started by increasing the width of the pictures on posts. A lot is more to come. And I think it will be exciting for you.

I cannot recall the name of the caterer but the food was excellent. It is the best food I ate in an inconference in Montreal. Thank you to the organizators and the participants for making it a success.

PHOTO CREDITS:
Except for the laptop image, all the images were taken by the extremely talented Eva Blue. I invite you to see her WordCamp Montreal 2009 photo set, you will not regret it.

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I selected the Wordpress Related Posts plugin which assigns the related posts based on the higher number of matching Wordpress tags. If you are good at tagging properly your posts, you will see that that this method is quite effective. I typically detailed the content of my categories using tags.

Installation Tips

I am lucky to have a test version of my blog. So I tested the results first to make sure the look and feel were the way I want it. It took me less 2 minutes, including testing, to add a Related Posts section at the bottom on every post to On the Web with Kim Vallee. For my design blog, At Home, my programmer modified that same plugin to show thumbnails arranged in a row instead of a bullet list. I did not use the image option for my social media blog since not every post has a picture.

You simply search for Related Posts on Plugin Browser/Installer of your Wordpress interface. Selected the one developed by Denis. Pay attention to the developer name since there are more than one plugin called Wordpress Related Posts. Like you do for any plugin, install it and activate it. Then, configure the preferences (available via the Settings menu once the plugin is installed).

Related posts is one of many methods that you can use to create serendipity in your blog and increase the page views.

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But as many other bloggers, I often wish to mix and match plugins in a different way. This is where I hit a wall. I hit a few walls so far. Some are due to the fact that I run a design blog where the visual aspect is quite important. At other times, I wish to bring a feature to the next level.

Mashup Sites

Today’s blogs are mashups. Wordpress blogs are the king of mashups. Plugins are developed by a bunch of programmers of different skill levels. The ideal plugin gives control to the user with parameters. One size fits all does not work to bring the ultimate experience to your community.

To understand my point, let’s look at the mashup of P2 theme with Twitter Tools. Two teams developed the 2 projects. I decided to put them together to create my Live blog. I used these 2 tools as an example but the same hold true for most Web 2.0 tools that you put together.

The Situation

Like I mentioned yesterday on my At Home blog, I created Kim Vallee Live to publish quick posts, without photos and to live blog when I go to conferences. The P2 theme interface provides a Twitter-style interface without limiting my comment to 140 characters, which provides the right framework for what I want.

One feature of the Twitter Tools plugin is to automatically publish a tweet by shortening the message I entered in Kim Vallee Live. But the way it is done right now does not add value to my readers. See for yourself, why I do not like the current result:

Twitter Tools automatically adds “New blog post:” in front of the tweet. Even if technically, each entry I published in P2 is a post, there are not from a user viewpoint. My programmer changed the plugin to put #kvlive instead. If the maker of Twitter Tools had better thought about usability, they could have add one more parameter to their long list of options so I can fill the text of the prefix. If I do not wish to add a prefix, I would leave blank the text box.

The other problem is that the tweet message is too short to be meaningful for my followers. What happened is that the Twitter Tools plugin used the post title as the content for the tweet. The P2 theme stored the first 40 characters as the post title. The maker of the P2 theme did not anticipated that it could be a problem since this Wordpress theme was designed to show Twitter-style posts.

One lesson I learned from years of experience in software development is that users will always find new ways to use your applications. As more and more non-technical people are embracing social media and running different types of blogs, it puts more pressure on developers of mashup tools to give more control to the users.

Custom-Made Solution

I defined with Jerome of Paradivision (we own Paradivision) the ultimate automatic tweet generator for Kim Vallee Live. We still have to implement it. Until then, I disabled the automatic tweet feature. When it is done, Jerome and I will share with you what we did.

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No blogger can ignore Facebook and Twitter when promoting his or her blog. Link share holds the key element in this equation. I explained before the viral marketing power of adding a post link to your Facebook profile or fan page for every new post.

This technique is more effective if Facebook displays well the content of your post. Look at the differences between examples 1 , 2 and 3. I took those from links that I posted on my On the Web fan page.

Example 1 shows the post title but it displays keywords instead of the excerpt of the post. I was surprised when I saw that Problogger did worst (example 2). His blog returns the title of the post as the excerpt. Example 3 is how I did it. Both of my blogs return the post title and the post excerpt. Example 3 looks more professional and shows that you care about your readers by saving them time. This is something we test before we launched my blog.

Publishing the excerpt gives you more chances to grab the attention of people who see the link on Facebook. Remember that your links are not just for your friends and your fans. Potentially the friends of your friends may see your links. Seeing the excerpt may convince any of them to visit your blog.

If you are not tech savvy, know that the solution depends on the way your blog theme is programmed. This is not something particular to Wordpress; you can reproduce Example 3 with any blog platform where you control the programming of the blog template.

I wrote this post to alert you to this fact. Test it with your own blog and you will see if changes are necessary.

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Set up a self-hosted Wordpress

The blogging platform of choice these days are a self-hosted Wordpress infrastructure. It unites flexibility and a vast array of functionality.

If your blog complements a Web site, add a /blog directory as the blog URL (i.e. mainsiteURL.com/blog). This will enhance the SEO of your main Web site.

Plugins and Other Programs To Install Before Your Launch

Use AKISNET from the start since it will catch most spams. Since Wordpress is extremely popular, spammers target us. I suggest not moderating the comments; readers prefer the immediate feedback. Allow time on your agenda to review the comments and remove the undesirable comments. The new comment email notification of Wordpress saves me time. This way, I log in to the WP admin software only if I want to mark as spam or delete a comment.

Set up your RSS feed with Feedburner. You get basic stats on your RSS subscribers (not that useful). The most important reason to use Feedburner is if you ever need to change your blog URL (it happens more than you think), your readers will follow you automatically. It is worth to setup a link (or a form) for Email subscription to your feed with Feedburner.

Start collecting statistics from day one. Install both Sitemeter and Google Analytics. Both software is used for different purposes. Any serious blogger uses both; I will tell you why in another post (long to explain).

Necessary Content Before the Launch

Take the time to finalize 5 to 7 posts before launching your blog. Publish 3 to 5 posts and keep the rest in reserve before you open your blog. Having several posts at the inset let your readers know what to expect. As a result they will be more inclined to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Writing several posts gives you a chance to see if you can produce content for your niche. Having a few posts in reserve will reduce the initial pressure and adjustments that come with running a blog.

Disclose your publishing schedule to build reader loyalty. Be realistic. It does not really matter at first if you publish a post once a week or once a day; the important thing is to select a publishing schedule that you can follow.

Nice photos sell a story. Put a big photo immediately after the title. If appropriate, add 1 or 2 more photos spread inside the post.

MORE stories here:
+ A new adventure in blogging 101 (the first post of this blog)
+ How to Write Great Blog Content
+ 5 simple and free ways to grow your traffic when you are launching a blog

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• Need for More User Control with Mashups