Choosing a design for your blog, forum, or site is rarely an easy task.  Nowadays, there are thousands of themes and skins to choose from.  So how do you know which one is right for you? 

There are countless criteria you could use to rate your options, but when you think about it all of these factors fall under the following three categories:

Design

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; so just because you love a Wordpress theme or vBulletin skin, it doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice.  In a nutshell, you will want to select a design that would be generally considered both functional and aesthetically pleasing. 

Although some may disagree with me, I have found lighter color schemes work better than dark colors.  If you need proof, just take a look at the top sites out there like Twitter, CNN, and Facebook.  They may use dark colors for accent borders, but their backgrounds are white and they make use of upbeat colors.

You also want to make sure the design can accommodate the features and content you plan to use.  For example, if you want to use banner ads, make sure it has built in placeholders to put them.

Platform

What platform will you be building your site on?  You will need to know this in order to pick out a compatible design.  Today, WordPress is one of the most popular choices and for good reasons!  It is a very versatile format which allows advanced configurations.  In addition, it is user-friendly and open source (free).  For many people, this is probably the best platform. 

If you are looking to create a discussion forum or message board, then vBulletin is probably the way to go.  My friend created a cosmetic surgery forum for people to discuss rhinoplasty, botox, skin care, etc.  He built it on vBulletin and used a premade vBulletin skin for its design.  It’s a great platform but the biggest drawback is that it costs a couple hundred dollars, so it’s not affordable to use on multiple sites.  This is why he used WordPress for Anti-Wrinkle; his blog about anti-aging skincare.

SEO

Most of the time people don’t think about this when picking out a design, but the truth of the matter is that this is just as important.  You want a theme which is coded in an efficient manner.  That way your site will load quickly; search engines favor faster load times.  You also want it to offer the option of human-readable permalinks, meta tags, and pinging (notifying search engines when you add or modify posts and articles).  Optimal usage of title and H1, H2, etc. are also properties which can help with SEO.  Having a template which utilizes these practices is the first step to good search engine optimization.

The bottom line is that when choosing a design, it’s important to take into account SEO just as much as the aesthetic elements.  Fortunately, there are a number of themes and templates which offer the best of both worlds.

It doesn’t matter if your site is for business or pleasure… the fact is everyone wants to get more traffic.  That being said, there are different approaches you should take depending on the type of site you have.  However, there are also a number of universal “rules” you should follow no matter what.  Let’s take a look at both the similarities and differences.

 Relevant Domain:  You want a domain that is both easy to remember and relevant to the subject of your site.  For example, let’s say you want to run a personal finance site for credit card ratings.  Your goal is to provide credit card reviews and monetize it using affiliate marketing.  When selecting a domain, it would be best to choose one that contains your main keyword; credit card.  For example, a domain like CreditCardForum.com would be a far better choice than PlasticPaymentAdvice.com.  Although they’re both relevant, it’s better to have that main keyword in there.

Good Content: Some people spend a great deal of time building a fancy site with flash and multimedia and then they wonder why they aren’t getting traffic.  Although these things may look nice, it’s not content that Google can easily search and archive. It’s okay to use these things in moderation, but if you do, make sure to have original text-based content to go along with it.

Search Engine Optimization:  If doesn’t matter how good your site is if people can’t find it!  Also known as SEO, this subject matter encompasses a number of different things, such as having good content like we just discussed.  In addition, it also includes many other onsite and offsite factors.  For on-site optimization, it’s good to have a site that loads quickly and can be easily navigated.  For off-site optimization, it’s important for other sites to link to you.  By offering your visitors useful content and articles, odds are that related sites will be more likely to link to you as a resource.  If your website is a business and you can afford to do so, it may not be a bad idea to consult a SEO professional to get advice. 

Layout:  It’s true that there are a number of overlapping design elements which apply to both businesses and personal blogs.  However there are also a number of key differences.  For example, let’s say you operate a retail site which sells skin care products for treating spider veins.  You will want a welcoming layout which allows visitors to easily navigate your selection of spider vein cream, vitamin K cream, and other related products.  Compare this to a personal blog, in which the homepage would probably only be used to display your latest blogposts.

Features:  As discussed above, it’s a good idea to write original content and articles on your site no matter what.  However there are features which will be found on some sites but not others.  First and foremost would be the shopping card feature.  If you are an online retail store you will need this, but obviously others would have no need.  If it’s a personal site, you may feature a blogroll which lists you friends’ sites.  However if you are a business, you probably won’t link to others since you will want to keep visitors (potential customers) on your page.