7 Things That Should be on Every Home Page

Before getting to the list, I must say that this is just my view.  And as you all know I am only in my second year of blogging and am still very much learning.

So here is my list:

1.   A contact page where your email address can be easily located – or put it directly into your sidebar.  Lots of people prefer to comment via email (avoids all the ghastly captcha stuff for one thing).  I have posted about this here. 

2.   A search box – people will often want to search for topics/recipes etc that interest them.  Make sure the search box is towards the top of your page.  Go to this post for more on this.

3.   A list of popular posts (including thumbnails) – I use the most popular for the month rather than all time.  Here is a post I did on this.  

4.   Big clear follow me options.  My current fave is Bloglovin but I also have a GFC widget and email etc.

5.   Short blog list of blogs you like – don't let it default to being a list of every blog you follow – that will slow the loading of your page and clutter your home page up.  I select a small number of book and food blogs to feature each week.  (There is no quid pro quo for this – I just like to share blogs I enjoy with my readers) Go here to see more about this.

6.   Restrict the number of posts that will show up on your home page to 6 or less.  Again your blog will load more quickly.

7.  If you are in to Pinterest (and most of us are), put a link to some of your important boards into your sidebar.

Other people will add that you have to have a good detailed About Me page – I don't happen to agree – but it is entirely a matter of personal taste.  I want the substance of the blog to speak for itself and for my readers to get to know the way I think that way.

Finally, although this is not about your home page – I can't help myself.  Please kill the captcha/word verification/prove you are not a robot stuff.  Nothing will put your readers off from commenting more.  If you are on Blogger and want to know how to kill it, go to this post.     

Do you need to declutter your home page?

Fairly soon after I started blogging I realised that my home page was getting very long because of the list of Blogs I Follow - which is one of the standard Blogger gadgets.  It is nice, of course, to give recognition to the blogs you follow but when there gets to be a long list I think it loses its effectiveness and just becomes a source of clutter.

What I did was instead of having a full list, I created several different short sidebars.  One lists the  Food Blogs that I am featuring that month.  The others list featured 4 Book Blogs and 6 Personal Blogs - those I refresh only every 2 months or so.

All you then have to do is remember to choose the blogs to add/remove each time you review your lists.

For the newbies, this is how you created a Featured Blogs List:

1. Delete your Blogs I Follow gadget (if you have one0 - you can always put it back later if you want to.  To delete this you need to be on the Layout section of your dashboard.
2. Click add a gadget.  Don't worry where it is at this stage because once you have created it you can always drag it to where you want it and drop it there.
3. Then select Blog List - give it a suitable title, choose whether to sort it by last updated or alpha (I chose alpha because that's the sort of train spotter I am).  Leave it at showing all blogs - since you will only be adding a few.  And lastly choose how to display the blogs I chose Icon and title of most recent item only.  You could choose a bigger display but I like to keep things as simple and uncluttered as possible.
4. Then you have to add the blogs you want in the list - you can either add by copying and pasting their url's in or you can click from your blog list and choose from there.
5. Finally, don't forget to click the orange save button right at the bottom of the gadget window otherwise all of your hard work will have been for nothing!

You can do sidebars for lists of your own posts a similar way but you use the Link List gadget instead of the Blog List one.

Happy blogging.