02 November 2008 Take The Next Right

I guess this is one of those posts that if I were to die tomorrow I would be annoyed this came up first on my blog.

But. I have a question which probably falls best under the Almost Pointless Blog Design category. Should the “Older Posts” button at the bottom of every blog be on the left hand side or the right hand side?

If you read chronologically from left to right then I imagine it should be on the left. But if you want your blog to open like a book I suppose it should appear on the right.

Thoughts?

Posted by Zac Martin
No Comments
  • Daniel Oyston
    Posted at November 2, 2008 9:21am, 02 November Reply

    Aaaah Zac, don’t ask me questions this early in the morning where both the answers you provide are ok! 🙂 I was going to dismiss the questions but …

    If I had to put some thought into it, I would probably take the hard line and say “whatever your readers like best” … so maybe a vote amongst your readers (maybe that is your goal with this post?).

    However, there could be some theory that can be applied here. Borrowing a rule from the PR discipline, when writing a media release, you should always put the most important elements first and each subsequent paragraph should be less important.

    Combining that with the fact that people read a web page like they read a book, and assuming your most recent posts are more important to promote than the older ones, then I say put them on the right hand side.

    “Right Side Strong Side” (from the movie Remember the Titans … I think).

  • Rick Clarke
    Posted at November 2, 2008 9:43am, 02 November Reply

    Most people seem to have it on the right, which seems to be the default. It made more sense to me to have it on the left, so it’s on the left on my blog. However, the disadvantage of this is that most people are used to it being on the right, so it might feel a bit confusing/unnatural for seasoned blog readers. So I dunno…

  • Wags
    Posted at November 2, 2008 10:16am, 02 November Reply

    Hey Zac, you’re going to have to stop posting at 3.30am, if this is the most important thing on your mind! Have you been out to the Northcote Social Club again? I wonder if Google has a beer goggles function for Blogger, too? 😉

    P.S. Good to see your readership is continuing to increase.

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at November 2, 2008 11:26am, 02 November Reply

    @ Daniel

    Yup, this was basically a polling post!

    @ Rick

    I think I’ve seen about 50/50, which is why I ended up posting in the first place.

    @ Wags

    No beer goggles needed, a big Friday night kept me in on Saturday. Although Google should be looking in such a feature!

  • Nick
    Posted at November 3, 2008 6:05pm, 03 November Reply

    Hey Zac – Right side, undoubtedly.

    Love the blog mate, keep it up.

    Nick

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