Sometimes the quickest, easiest way to accomplish a design task is to “cheat.” Instead of editing PHP code for example, you can adjust the space above or below a WordPress widget in a couple of simple ways.

1. Go to Presentation > Widgets, and click on the text icon on the widget to open it.

Note: Some widgets won’t open and can’t be edited,
but usually the widget above or below them can be.
In that case, pick one of those, or rearrange widgets.

2. If you know the widget is a text widget, but the text icon is not visible,
even when you click on it, you may need to drag the widget out of the sidebar,
replace it in the unused widgets area below, and then drag it back. The text
icon will then reappear.

3. With the text for the widget displayed, add an empty paragraph or two
above or below the existing text. For example: < p > < / p >

Note: The example has spaces added between parts of the code
so it will show in Wordpress (instead of WP reading it as actual code
and inserting a blank line in this post). When putting the code in your
widgets, do not use the spaces. (Remember that if you need to show code.)

4. Close the text box and Save Changes.

5. Click on the View Site link.

Now there should be extra space wherever you added a line < p > < / p >.
If not, go back and add a period ( . ) between the < p > and < / p >.
For example: < p > . < / p >

6. Save your changes again. Click on the View Site link again.

7. Check to see if the spacing is what you wanted.

If not, add or delete lines (by adding < p > . < / p > for each new line)
until you are happy with the vertical spacing (or it’s the best you can do).

The periods are hardly noticeable on screen. If you scroll down and look closely, you can see one above the BlogRush widget, where I added an extra line.

You can make these changes very quickly. More important, you can make them without really knowing PHP or HTML.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As of today, there is a terrific new way to get more readers to your blog at no cost. It puts a list of related blogs (in your chosen topic area) in a widget on your blog AND lists your blog on other related blogs.

The idea is to get more readers, and you get and more links (relevant links!) to your blog at the same time. To go sign up, click here

I’m very excited about this. I have listed four of my WordPress blogs and one self-hosted Blogger blog so far. To see how the little list widget looks, look in the sidebar area to the right, and scroll down. You can put it anywhere in a sidebar.

I do wish they had a category just for blogging. But they do have a lot of categories. I had no trouble finding good matches for my other blogs.

In the grand old tradition of alphabet lists (A is for Apple, B is for Bear, …), here are 26 blog design principles, from Audience to Zones:

Audience—Who are you writing for? What do they like? Don’t imitate the sites they frequent, but be aware of the kind of look they like.

Blog engine—The WordPress blogging engine, hosted on your own domain, is by far the only way to go for flexible design, prestige, a wide selection of free ready-made themes and plugins, and search engine optimization. There is also a wide selection of tutotials and instructional videos for WordPress these days. Many are free.

Color—Color conveys meaning. What are you saying with your blog? If your links are pale gray or pale blue or some other unreadable color, you are saying I don’t care whether you can read this or not. And most people cannot. So you will annoy and lose potential blog readers.

Design principles. Do you know the basics of good design? If not, either learn them or hire a good blog designer. Design matters. It helps convey your message to the right audience. It helps you get and keep readers.

Elegance—Strive for elegance in the mathematical sense: simplicity and directness. No matter what your audience and topic, make sure your blog is optimal for that audience and that topic, with no extra gimmicks or clutter.

Focus—What is your blog topic? Again, who are you writing for? Focus your design on communicating with that audience about that particular topic. Context is everything.

Graphics—The style of blog graphics should match the style of the blog—and each other. A ragbag collection of ads, free widgets, and fuzzy photos (not to mention crappy clip art) is worse than no graphics at all. If you plan to fully monetize your blog, it’s worth paying a pro to get the riight look if you don’t have a trained eye for graphics yourself.

Headlines—Make sure the headings are easy to read. You’ve written them to be catchy and include keywords relevant to your blog topic. (Haven’t you???) Now make sure people can easily read them.

Ingenuity—Even the best theme has limitations. Experiment. Innovate. A little ingenuity can solve design problems and make your blog stand out. For example, did you know that if you run out of text widgets, you can put two scripts into one WordPress widget? You can.

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Viral Reciprocal Carousel is a great free way to raise the ranking of your blog with Technorati and other opinion leaders while getting new blog readers and helping out other bloggers. Sound great? It is.

This system has resulted in great success for many bloggers. Now that it’s starting up again, this is a great chance to join in. After all, no matter how good your blog design is, people have to know about it before they can read it.

Here’s how the Viral Reciprocal Carousel works:

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Your blog may not seem hard to read to you, because you already know what it says. But if it makes your visitors’ eyes tired, they’ll leave. Using these 6 tips can make your blog easier to read and more appealing and can help turn casual visitors into loyal blog readers

More: continued here

The story at the top of this page is displayed via RSS feed from another site. So far, so good.

However, before setting up the feed, I had published a story at that site on hurricane supplies, not realizing that it would show up on the feed to this blog, where it is clearly off topic.

But I had also published the two blog-related stories that I wanted to use here, and I didn’t want to duplicate that content. What to do?

As an experiment, I tried editing the blog story (the other one is still being processed) after the feed was displayed here, and I deleted the off-topic story. I also added keywords in WordPress, since they don’t come across in the feed—and it worked!

I suspect that the hurricane story will show up again when the next cron job refreshes the feed, but at least I can correct the problem. I could even set the cron jobs very far apart…or maybe turn them off, and keep things as they are till the next time i place a story.

Hmmmm. Time for another experiment?

As you can see, my RSS experiment worked. I was able to edit the stories after the feed displayed them on this site. That meant I could delete the hurricane story without disrupting the feed. So all is well.

Graphic designers and web designers tend to be slaves to fashion. Seemingly unable to resist the latest design trends they often follow them without thinking, even when doing that makes ads and web sites difficult or uncomfortable to read

More: continued here