31 Days of Submissive Journaling – Day 19: Ways to Personalize Your Online Journal (Blog)

One of the easiest ways to show who you are and what you want to write about is to personalize your submissive blog. What your blog looks like will give people a first impression before they’ve read a single word so it’s often very important if you want to attract readers. Also, it’s more likely you’ll want to write in your blog if it looks pretty to you, because let’s face it, we love to express ourselves! Whether you have a public or private blog, making it a personal statement is great fun. Let’s go over what sort of things you can do to make your blog speak of your personality and be attractive to readers so they’ll want to come back.

Blog Name

The name of your blog is usually an afterthought for many personal blogs, which is why so many blogs are called “Sub X’s Journey”. Even my personal blog has gone from having a clever name to being just my name. :P I clever blog name not only gives people something memorable to bookmark your blog, but it can convey your personality or the topic of your blog. So, consider something creative for your blog name!

Theme

Blog hosts often have a variety of themes you can choose to dress up your blog. Some of them are available in the dashboard area, and other blog hosts allow you to change the CSS code to design your own. While I am not going to write about how to design your site, there are a ton of sites and blogs that can help you learn how to personalize your blog so search for how-tos with your favorite search engine.

When picking a theme, pick one that works for what you plan to write. Often, magazine style themes won’t work well for a personal blog so make sure you test drive the theme to see if it looks good with the posts you’ve got and your plans for the blog. Something simple is complimentary if you plan on using a lot of images and something with more graphics in the theme could help a text-based blog.

Colors

I touched on colors a bit when I talked about themes, but here’s a bit more. We’ve all seen BDSM sites that tend to go with a black background with white or light gray text. Don’t do that. Just because you might talk about a taboo topic doesn’t mean it has to be black. It’s hard to read, it’s unfriendly for people who have vision issues, it doesn’t translate well to mobile devices and it’s just really hard to read. Also, black and white just don’t convey any sort of personality. Also, consider if the colors you have chosen make the text easier to read, compliment the photos you are sharing (if you are sharing any) and that the text color is readable. There’s so much you can do with color on your blog, so don’t be afraid to play around with it.

Images

You can use images on your blog, in the header and the sidebar as well as in posts. There are a lot of stock photography sites that you can buy images from for cheap. Please do not use images you have not gained permission to use. This includes just searching Google Images for ones you like. Just because it’s online, does not mean it’s free to use. If you don’t want to buy images, then take your own.

Once you have an image, I use PicMonkey, an online photo editor to change the size, add borders, text on top and so much more. Sometimes I find myself lost for hours playing with images and all the fun stuff they have!

Font and Text Size

Lastly, I want to talk about the actual text of your blog. There is such a thing as text that’s too small, too hard to read or just the wrong font. Larger text is easier to read, that’s for sure. Most sites have a standard for around 12-14px font sizes. A personal blog can choose a wide range of fonts (but don’t expect readers to be able to see them, the font is browser dependent) to express your personality a bit more. But again, unless you are the only one going to read your blog, make sure it’s a font that others can read too.

I hope, with the help of this series that you are able to express yourself on your own submissive blog!