I have noticed a growing trend of adding “stuff” the ActiveRain blog sidebar. The tools, widgets, and banners we add to our blogs should add value to our blogs. It doesn’t matter if it is to promote outside activity, track visitors, or any other purpose for that matter. What we must avoid is a sloppy appearance, broken pages, or gratuitous distractions. Whatever your personal style is your sidebar serves an important function and we should not litter it.

Here are a few suggestions:

Remove broken widgets – I am often surprised how many blog have broken sidebars revealing little snippets of code. A broken webpage can hurt your credibility and may deter visitors from spending time on your blog. If it doesn’t work just remove it until it can be fixed.

Size does matter – There is a limited amount of usable width in the sidebar. I would not recommend going over 200 pixels wide for any widget. Just my opinion but it looks sloppy if it goes beyond the blog margins that are provided.

Center – Center alignment of sidebar looks cleaner then left alignment. Wrap your widgets in a div tag using the following code as an example:

<div align=”center”>Widget Code</div>

Space – Whitespace is often overlooked in design, but there is nothing worse than a overcrowded page. Wrap side bar code in a p tag:

<div align=”center”><p>Widget Code</p></div>

Don’t overdo it – Is the bobbing avatar really necessary? While it very well may be, carefully consider what to include in your sidebar and what can be taken out. Remember we want our readers to focus on the important messages in our blog.

What other sidebar tips can you share?

Photo credit: MyNameMattersNot