Choosing blog colors often takes a backseat to choosing a good theme, installing widgets, writing posts, and all the other work involved in building and maintaining a blog. But colors are much more important than they may seem.

Here’s why:

1. Color is the first impression people have of your blog. Before they read a word or recognize the image in your header, color affects them. The effect can attract or repel them.

2. The colors of the text, type, and mouseovers on your blog have the most affect on two things:

Readability (whether your blog is easy and pleasant to read)

Legibility (whether it is possible for most people to read, without hurting their eyes)

Trust me, if it hurts their eyes to read your blog, they won’t.

3. Enhancing or cancelling your message. If you blog about business, and your blog is pink and frilly, guess what? Unless you’re Mary Kay Cosmetics, you’ve got a problem. You just won’t look business like.

4. Up to date? Or faddish? Yes, your color schemes should be up to date. But if you use the current favorite fad colors of today, guess what happens tomorrow? That’s right, your site looks outdated and boring. And that makes your ideas and offers seem outdated and boring, too.

5. Getting lost in the crowd? Go your own way! Better to blaze your own path with a classy/classic color scheme that creates a distinctive, memorable image.

6. Know your audience, and choose colors that appeal to them. In the U.S., older guys often choose supposedly macho colors (tan, gray, black, rust, orange) no matter who they are trying to communicate with. But what are they conveying? Is rust a good color if you’re selling cars or precision metal instruments? Does gray appeal to your market? Find out! Design your site to please your audience, not yourself.

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Does this happen to you, too? I keep running out of text widgets. WordPress only gives you nine.

So when you have used all nine text widgets, and you just have to add one more script or ad, what do you do? If there’s a text widget immediately above or below where you want to put the new one, no problem!

1. Copy the script or code you need to add.

2. Log into your WordPress admin area.

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