-- Blog Basics

This week we’re going to focus on blog basics — when a new reader gets to your site, how easy is it for them to find out basic information about you and what your blog is about? In retrospect, this is something that should have happened a lot earlier in the project. However, I got so excited about other ideas that something like blog basics slipped aside.

• Write (or update) your “About Me” Page — Make sure you can see your About Me from the main page of your blog because someone just arriving at the site should be able to easily see a little information about you

• Update your contact information

• Add some sort of picture of yourself (if you’re comfortable with that)

• Update your Blogroll — Blogging Startup has a good series on blogrolls starting with “Does My Blog Need A Blogroll?” — check out some of the other entries, they’re pretty short and interesting

• Create a link to your Archives on your front page (there are a lot of widgets for this, or you can find other ways to do it — either way, it’s important to do so people who want your archives can find them to get a sense of what they can expect from your blog)

• Add a link (or make sure a link is there) so readers can subscribe to your blog via RSS

• Get to work on other basic blog maintenance you’ve been meaning to do