I created a new blog template for this blog, which you're seeing now. I implemented this template to several other of my blogs too, using different color schemes.

This template has two particular advantages...

1. It has a more professional appearance than my previous designs


2. It accomodates three standard ad sizes (728x90, 160x600, and 300x250)

For those two reasons, it works well for this blog, and others I implemented it on.

But I have a couple of other blogs that it just won't work on "Strange New Products" and "Junk Food Blog". Those two are more "entertainment" and "comedy" related. I need a template that looks jovial and fun, but still accomodates the three ad sizes I mentioned above.

If you look at this blog's header, I have a tope-colored field with a leaderboard ad in the middle, and the blog's logo in the upper-left corner. The field needs to have a solid color, so that the leaderboard ad can be easily noticed. I can't put a photograph into this field, or else the ad loses its visbility.

That's part of the problem with these two other blogs, they each have highly detailed graphics as their headers. These graphics have become a recognizable "brand" of these blogs. So, I want to continue using them. But how I do I weave a leaderboard ad into those headers?

If you look at Junk Food Blog, you'll see that I placed the leaderboard underneath the header. It works, but it makes the header area quite large. I want to make the header area smaller.

I spent some time searching Google for "blog templates" to see some examples. But, almost all the examples don't take ad placements into consideration. Doesn't anyone design blog templates for ad placements? Or does everyone else think that blogs are only for personal use?  

Labels: Blog Templates