Turning your blog into a publication is much easier than you might think, it also has some serious benefits! Before we start getting into some simple and helpful tips on turning your blog into a publication - let’s think about why we would want to do such a thing. Ever since the blog explosion around 2004 print newspapers started having a harder time keeping a hold of subscribers. People began to read blogs more than they read print publications. It doesn’t mean their brand loyalty was completely gone, it’s just safe to assume that their subscribers were seeking out a new medium to find his/her news.

A completely successful blog is a Web site like TMZ (The Thirty Mile Zone), which now has a very large following, a staff of over twenty people, and a daily television show on Fox. Similarly a blog like X17Online, which is now one of the top Web sites for celebrity gossip. Completely started online, the photographers decided to start making the news instead of sending the photographs to people who published it. Simple lesson there, if you have the content - publish it! Both of these are great examples of how you can start from a blog, and wind up somewhere much larger.

Not everyone is eager to turn their blog into a publication, some would rather make a blog post about a random topic and call it a night. Others will cultivate their article (notice I changed blog post into article) and do a little research about their subject before going live. The simple lesson here is that you are now discussing a topic that is (assuming from the above) well educated.

Simple ways to make your blog an online publication

• Discuss topics everyone can relate to - news is news, no matter the topic
• Make sure when you talk about your publication, you say article and not blog post - this automatically turns people into assuming you did the research, instead of just ranted
• Focus on the content, there is no need to decorate interesting topics - if your content is good, try and show it off
• Don’t over complicate things, keep your design simple - this Web site focuses completely on the content, notice the low amount of images and decorations? Decorate using typography
• Create a great archive page - every publication strives to have great archives, be sure your publication has author archives, weekly archives, monthly archives, and yearly archives
• Never under estimate the power of breadcrumb navigation - if you have a lot of articles, don’t allow people to get lost, publications often times pay close attention to these navigational details

These are some simple things to keep in mind to transform your blog into an online publication. Often a new look or design may be involved if you are really serious, but some of these simple things will help your branding. I recently started a small studio in Chicago that helps with information architecture and publication design, if you are seeking this sort of help please don’t hesitate to visit our Web site at p41studios.com.

You might be asking yourself some questions now. Well I don’t really know how to do some of the things in list, like making breadcrumb navigation or creating such an advanced archives page. No need to fear, I am here! I love the WordPress platform, although I know some prefer MoveableType. While I am not here to get into that argument, I will say that the following plugins and code I will showing you are specific for WordPress.

To create a simple breadcrumb navigation, use this amazing plugin!

Archives are everything

To make a very useful archives page - like the ones we use on almost all of our publication designs, use the following code and follow these easy steps.

1. In your theme folder for WordPress - duplicate your page template, then rename that duplicated file “archives.php”

2. Log into your WordPress admin panel, then navigate into your theme editor. Find that file that you just duplicated and add the following page template code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Archives
*/
?>

3. Where you usually have the content for the page (which usually is a WordPress loop) replace that content with this code:

<h3>Browse by Day</h3>

<p>You can browse the archives by specific weeks the article was posted.</p><form id=”archiveform” action=”<?php bloginfo(’home’) ?>”><p class=”select”><select name=”archive_chrono” onchange=”window.location
=(document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono[document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono.
selectedIndex].value);”>
<option value=”>Select Week</option>
<?php get_archives(’weekly’,”,’option’); ?>
</select></p>
</form>

<h3>Browse by Month</h3>
<p>Browse the archives by each month, the number after the month is the amount of articles that were posted for that month.</p>
<p class=”select”><select name=\”archive-dropdown\” onChange=’document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;’>
<option value=\”\”><?php echo attribute_escape(__(’Select Month’)); ?></option>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=monthly&format=option&show_post_count=1′); ?> </select></p>

<h3>Browse by Year</h3>
<p>Be careful, this may result in a large number of returning queries.</p>
<p class=”select”><select name=\”archive-dropdown\” onChange=’document.location.href=this.options[this.selectedIndex].value;’>
<option value=\”\”><?php echo attribute_escape(__(’Select Year’)); ?></option>
<?php wp_get_archives(’type=yearly&format=option&show_post_count=1′); ?> </select></p>

Above is the actual code I use for this Archives page. In case you don’t know, you can change the paragraph’s to be whatever you want, and you can change the H3’s to whatever you want. The only real important information is the select drop down code.

4. Save the template then go into Write - > Page

5. Name your page Archives, but don’t write any content, then navigate down towards Page Template and select Archives. Publish and your done! The permalink should be (yoururl)/archives/

Hopefully this gets you on your way to starting off on great Information Architecture and publication design. More soon!