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WordPress Theme Footer: Useful Content or Fluff?

By Kyle Eslick | Filed Under Web Design

A couple of days ago I posted about some changes I’ve made to the blog design here at Kyle’s Cove. The most notable change is that I moved some of the sidebar content to the blog’s footer.

I was pleased to see that the reaction has been pretty positive overall, but some people have recommended that I adjust what is displayed in the footer. The main suggestion is that I move the recent comments module to the sidebar and add something like blog archives to the footer.

I feel that this is a great suggestion, but I wanted to see if I could get a discussion started about this and get some readers thoughts. If you were moving sidebar content to your footer, what would you put there?

Here are the two arguments as I see it:

  1. Useful Content – Some people I’ve talked to feel that if you place content in the sidebar, it should be useful content. The idea is that once search engine traffic is done reading the post and has scrolled to the bottom of the page, they are presented a choice. They can either hit the Back button on their browser or you can give them somewhere to go. Things like related/popular posts, recent posts/comments, categories, archives, or subscribe buttons would be good things to help keep that reader on your blog.
  2. Extra Fluff – The other argument is that people will see your useful stuff in the sidebar while browsing. Therefore, the footer seems to be a better place to put extra stuff that people will look for, but not your important stuff that you want readers to see. This would leave the footer for archives (which if people want to use, they will scour the page for), top commentators (which is more of a link out reward to regualar comentators than something people will use), and widgets such as MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and the Alexa widget.

I personally feel that #2 is probably the way to go, but I can see the point several have made with #1. I will be making some adjustments to the footer this weekend to shrink it a little and change what is displayed, so fans of #1, here is your chance to get me to change my mind!

  • http://yeepage.com simon

    i think i am with you, i am a fluff person and put all the nonsense stuff out the way….

  • http://www.shankrila.com K-IntheHouse

    Kyle.. it’s great as it is. But, I’m interested to see what your other readers have to say about it!

  • http://cybernetnews.com Ryan Wagner

    I really like what you did with the footer now. Since it is a bit more condensed you can probably think about adding a fourth column in.

  • http://www.kylescove.com Kyle Eslick

    Ryan,

    I think your comment was left as I was updating it! The fourth column has since been added and there is still plenty of room available if I decide I need it.

    I went with the manual entering of select categories like you suggested!

  • http://cybernetnews.com Ryan Wagner

    Looks nice!