YJL

What should be in header and footer?

I believe it varies from type of website to personal preferences. For a blog, I’d say it all depends on the blogger’s liking. Ever since I started to simplify my blog template, there isn’t really much information are needed.

For header, the blog’s name is more than sufficient.

From my experience, a description about a blog usually would not be accurate over time. Interest and topic of a blog changes from time to time, some posts may be way off that blog’s name and/or description have suggested, therefore the name of blog is enough. If you try to list all topics in the description, you may end up with a long list and that’d be impractical to maintain.

For footer, the blogger’s name, let readers know who write the blog.

Stating the copyright is always a good idea to have in the footer. I must point out that footer is the least valued element in some blogs, in few blogs I have seen don’t even have it.

Also a clean navigation menu—which must contain a page named About, I would suggest—is a plus. The menu can be placed at either top or bottom, or even both locations.

What my old header and footer looked like?

The following screenshot shows the previous header and footer looked in on this blog:

Old blog header and footer

I feel no shame to say that they looked simple enough. They are purely text-based, only a little big in my opinion, but comparing to other blogs, they are tiny.

If I have to nitpick, then it must be the font. The blog’s name used a font called Special Elite, and it’s only where the font was used.

Now?

The current header and footer is shown as follows, and they probably would last forever:

New blog header and footer

It may look insignificant at first glance or may be considered too small to notice, but it’s not. Why not? Because we tend to know what to expect at top and bottom of page. You know what’s at first line of page whether the text is in 72pt or 8pt, size doesn’t matter when the information is known about already. When you need to read blog’s name, you scroll to the top and there you’d have it.

Even current header looks very simply, I want to simplify more, because “Outputs directly from me…” doesn’t mean a lot to me, when I now read it and think about it. I could remove it and move the navigation menu up, next to the title. But let’s leave it for next time.

As for the footer, same thing. Only I kept that sort of tag line since it has been on my blogs for more than four years.

Final thoughts

There is no standard defining what has to be in header and footer, and it shouldn’t be one. For me, they have to be simple. I’ve learned lengthy sentence doesn’t equal to being informative. Keep them simple and essential, that’s useful and practical.

You do not need a 100-word blog description below the blog title, nor a 100-word disclaimer in your footer. Although, it’s situational, depends on type of websites, but less truly is more.

You also do not need a fancy header image. Yes, one such image may showcase your artistic designs if your website is about design. However, I have seen a few websites such as photographer’s, the only images they have are the photos they shoot. Sometimes, no, most of time, text is even more powerful than image. Just like black/white photos can have more impact on the viewer’s mind than color photos do. The less of complicated element is a trade of more focus.

Nonetheless, there does have times that more is more. Well, only I can’t think of one at this moment.

Good header and footer are good when they are.