This is the free 27-page eBook version of a post series that appeared on Skelliewag in 2007. It’s completely open-source, so do whatever you want with it: offer it as a download on your blog or website, share it with friends, or sell it and make a million!

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Photo by Helico

I want to share a post idea anyone can use. It’s almost guaranteed to produce one of the best blog posts you’ve ever written.

It’s an idea with limited uses, so I’d suggest that you use it wisely. It will also take some time to do it justice.

The perfect scenario would be one where you have ample time to write but a lack of inspiration. We’ve all had those days, and I hope this will be your Get Out of Jail Free card in dealing with them.

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When I studied journalism last year I learned that your ability to write is largely irrelevant when it comes to producing hard news stories (e.g. a young male driver was killed last night when he collided with a passenger bus… those kinds of stories). The words you use are just a vehicle for what’s really important: facts, which ones you include, which ones you leave out and how you present them. In many ways, the words you choose are expected to convey the facts of the matter without getting in their way.

A painting can’t exist without a canvas, but the viewer should, ideally, forget the canvas exists.

I want to suggest that writing on the web is much the same. The fast pace of web browsing and the vast amounts of writing available have created a medium unlike any other.

People don’t read online. Nor do they scan. They extract ideas, resonating with some and disregarding others. They do so at breakneck speed, only slowing down when a particular idea truly warrants it.

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Photo by pingnews

The humble sidebar is almost as old as the web itself, but its true importance is often underestimated. And, let’s face it, it’s very easy to do badly. In an effort to create a sidebar that does everything at once, many people end up creating sidebars that are hardly usable. Too much information causes information overload.

The problem hasn’t arisen because we’re all user-interface dunces. In truth, it’s a simple matter of perspective. As bloggers and webmasters, we created our sidebars and thus know exactly where to look for everything. Because we have important pages bookmarked and generally don’t pour over our own archives, we may rarely need to interact with what we’ve created.

Without being able to look at our design with the fresh eyes of a new visitor, it’s very hard to know what works and what doesn’t. In this post, I want to get inside the mind of a new visitor and prospective loyal reader, and explain how to create a sidebar that works.

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Photo by Libertinus

As I write this, it’s a Friday, and I don’t expect anyone to see this post until roughly six days from now. I have another post to write after this one, but if I don’t finish it tonight, I have plenty of time to do so. I can take as much time as I need to say exactly what I want to say.

It took months for me to develop the habit of writing posts in advance, but it’s now something I would recommend to anyone for all non-news and non-time sensitive content. If you’ve been meaning to develop the habit but haven’t yet been able to do so, resolve to start from now. It is the single best thing you can do to improve the quality of the content you create. Perhaps more importantly, it will take a big chunk of stress out of your content creation routine.

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