For Bloggiesta I mainly focused on the appearance of my blog. I created a page for my archived posts and labels, fiddled with the background and added social icons to match. I also created title banners for each of my gadgets on my sidebar. I then realized I didn’t like them. For some reason they looked messy and drew away from my post content. I then looked at my sidebar itself, after moving previous posts to a separate page I only had a search bar, currently reading gadget and recent posts. All of which I could do without. Then I read this article and decided to remove it completely and have She is too fond of books focus on my content, that is really what I want people to see, not to be distracted by my sidebar. After reading the article I realized I had put everything I needed into a page. I deleted the entirety of said sidebar except the social Media icons, I depleted my sidebar width (or at least as far as blogger would allow me) and extended the width of my blog. I’m quite pleased with it and think it has a more streamline approach. One thing I am annoyed with is the white borders around the pictures in my blog posts, does anyone know how to get rid of that? Even though I had to backtrack a little, I’m satisfied with what I accomplished. If you participated in Bloggiesta what did you accomplish?
It looks great! I wish I could do it too, but I'm not ready to let go the sidebar. I already went down to one last year and that was hard enough. lol Maybe someday…
Thanks, it was strangely a little nerve wracking to hit "remove gadget" but I really like the cleaness of it thus far.
I can only imagine how difficult it would be for you to give up your sidebar Michelle as there is a wealth of information on it. In the end you should do what makes you happy!
Interesting. I clicked through to that article and it certainly makes you think. I hate all the labels in my sidebar. They go on forever. I take the point that people can use the search box to find things. Hmmm… food for thought.
The long list of labels on my sidebar and the crazy collapseable post archive prompted me to change. I understand the use of a searchbar too, but at the same time I have all my reviews organized into one neat page so I'm questioning the need for that too…