Start Blogging #2 - What pages should a blog have?

Content Table

0. Welcome to the Guide
1. What is a blog
2. What pages should a blog have
3. Choose a Niche
4. Store your blog
5. Blogging software
6. Blogging Tips and Tricks

What pages should a blog have?

As you might have read before in lesson #1, a blog is a website with a couple extra features. Because a blog is a website as well, we need some default pages. Pages that should keep your visitors happy, because they create some recognition; people know what to do when they see the default pages on your blog. Here we go:

Homepage

The homepage can be found on any blog you visit. It is the page you land on when you type in the address of the blog and it is where you can find the latest blog posts.

Contact page

It is important to have a contact page. As you are running a blog you must be able to communicate with your readers. The contact page makes this possible and there you go; the communication with your readers is a fact.

About page

The about page is there to tell your users who the author of a blog really is and what he is about. By adding as much details to that page as possible you gather trust of your readers. The readers notice there is a real person with a real job behind the blog and that is important to keep and extend your readers-base.

Archives

The blog posts you have written before are stored in the archives, everything you have ever written on the blog can be found there. It isn’t that important to have them because you will usually have a plugin who do the ’sidemapping’ for you. See the next default page.

Sitemap

The sitemap of your blog is a page where is listed everything you have ever written for the blog, just like your archives. The difference with your archives is that in a sitemap only post-titles are listed. The biggest advantage of a sitemap is the ability of search engines to crawl your blog better and faster. A sitemap isn’t available by default but there are plugins to do the job for you.

End of lesson #2

You could have more specific pages on your blog, but these are the ones that your really should have. Don’t hesitate to add your own pages to your blog. If you have a question, I will listen.