The hat contest is over! Reflections on the theme of designs :)

The voting is over, you can do it yourself see results. Judging by the unsubscribed in the comments, the poll plugin worked correctly and displays the real state of affairs. Someone does not agree with this alignment, someone considers the caps to be insufficiently developed, but a competition is a competition. There were conditions, in accordance with them, the work was done, then there was a vote, so everything is fair.

Guys, thank you, everyone for participating, both those who made the hat and those who voted and wrote their opinions in the comments! It can be very useful to look at a blog through the eyes of another person, discuss and learn from experience.

The content of the article

You can't please everyone

It should be understood that no matter what hat appears on the blog, it will not be possible to please everyone, this is the law. The law means that all people are different. The most that can be done is to choose something according to the majority opinion. Therefore, you do not need to write to anyone about bad taste, or something else, just if your opinion differs from the majority, this only means that your opinion is different, nothing more.

From a personal example, regarding the previous template, which everyone supposedly liked so much. So, when I put it on a couple of years ago, and when I replaced the photo in the hat a year ago, people wrote to me in PM several times about how everything became bad, return it back 🙂 It was just that then I did not ask on the blog about how I like it whether you have a new template, but simply changed it, hence the letters to the PM. I am 100% sure that if I then would have done the same post «template updated», then in the comments, many more people would write that everything is bad, because not everyone will dare to write in a personal message. This is me trying to convey the idea that there have always been and will be those who do not like the look of the site, this is inevitable and normal.

Do you need any design at all

Further, I would like to say a few more words about the general need for certain decorations on the site. I personally take this quite calmly, as, for example, to a painting on the wall, or, as to airbrushing on a car. Everything is the same, the car is also driving, the apartment is the same one-room, but it's more pleasant to look at. Moreover, it is more pleasant, first of all, to yourself and to your acquaintances and friends who also see it. Blogs are not Facebook with contacts, bloggers do not have a development team, there is no marketing department who monitors the interests of the target audience, so you need to be more simple about everything. Especially for those who have a blog that generates income, because it is better to focus on the content, and not on the wrapper. It is the content, not the design, that distinguishes this or that blog from similar ones, which translates into both earnings and the growth of readers. And, if the site is not buggy and does not slow down, despite the fact that it has the necessary and useful articles, then this is a necessary and sufficient condition for its existence. I have examples before my eyes, when sites on free (not beautiful) waterpress templates developed very steeply, while super beautiful ones have slowly sunk into oblivion. And I myself also notice that if I read someone, it is not at all because of the design or the header, I like the presentation style and I like the authors of the texts / photos.

You also need to understand that a blog is an author's project, and the author himself should like its visual appearance, otherwise he will simply not be comfortable writing on it. And a blog is not a commercial resource where users have paid for a certain functionality and have the right to demand fulfillment of obligations. Bloggers keep their blogs in the format that they initially like, write on topics that are interesting to them, and they find their readers precisely because of their specific vision of the blog / world / life and thanks to their sometimes «bad» taste 🙂 Moreover, if the interests of the author of the blog change (change of topics of articles, change of templates, change of life principles), then his audience will also change, and this is also normal. And then every blogger decides for himself whether to write to him on an already uninteresting topic for the sake of an audience / earnings, or not to write.

I emphasize that blogs are author's projects, otherwise everything would be the same, like a carbon copy. It is enough to look at impersonal portals or content farms, the information there may be useful, but you will definitely not be able to read it like a blog.

Winners

  • Stanislav Batov), ​​hat 2.
  • Svetlana Zhuravleva (http://aigolana.blogspot.ru), cap 6.
  • Dmitry Polyakov, hat 1.

P.S. I am still thinking about dividing the blog into two parts, Travel vs Personal or Information vs Other. I would even say that these thoughts-doubts have been tormenting me for several months now, I want everything to be effective, to earn money, benefit, and for the soul. But he’s never a businessman, so it’s difficult to decide on something. In general, if I decide, then I will have to make two hats, I will just know who I should contact.