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Online Diary 101
Entries: Choosing a Design

By , About.com Guide

Designing a page is always a sensitive task. Should you keep the same design and layout for all your entry pages or should you customize each one for the mood of the day? Should you put all your entries for the week on one page or have a separate page for each day?

How you decide to do it is ultimately up to you, of course but let me give you some things to think about. If you keep all the entry pages of your site the same then your readers will alway know what to expect and where on the pages to look for different things you have there. On the other hand if you change each day for the mood or subject of the entry then you will have more colorful pages and readers will be able to better identify with what you are writing.

As for how to post your entries (daily, weekly, monthly) here are some thinking points. If you put all your entries for the week or month on one page then your readers won't have far to go when reading your journal. They will be able to just scroll down the page and read about your whole life for that time period. On the other hand, if you create a different page for each day then you will be able to change the design for each day, if you wish, and you will be able to give each entry it's own personal title. If you do it this way it also makes it easier to find specific entries when your readers are trying to find something they liked.

As with any page, when designing it choose colors that compliment each other and make it easier for the reader to read. You may want to use tables to put your links and other things on one side of the page and your entry on the other. This makes the column you are writing in narrower and makes your entry look longer.

Titles are a nice way of letting your reader know what they are going to read. They can be serious ("Grocery Day"), they can be descriptive of something specific that happened ("Then There Was Chocolate On The Floor") or they can be humorous ("Chocolate Milk, Chocolate Cows"). The more interesting you make the title the more likely it is that your readers will read the entries.

  1. Course Outline
  2. Editors & HTML
  3. Free Page Hosting
  4. Site Layout
  5. Creating a Title
  6. Main Page Design
  7. Writing a Description
  8. Main Page Linking
  9. Bio Page Design
  10. Writing a Biography
  11. Bio Page Linking
  12. Entry Page Design
  13. Writing Styles
  14. Entry Page Linking
  15. Adding Pictures
  16. Updating
  17. Archiving
  18. Promoting
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