Good Design Starts With the Homepage
I know there’s a lot of controversy over which part of your blog is most important. Some people say that because most of your traffic is going to come from links to your individual posts through either search engines or links from other blogs. Others say that because one of the most clicked links on your website is the “home” link, the homepage is the most important detail you should focus on.
While I don’t want to negate the importance of individual post page design, I personally find the homepage to be where you should spend the majority of your time designing.
The reason is simple (at least in my mind). Once the homepage is taken care of, single post pages can be taken care of based on your homepage design.
See, web design is all about structure. A “wireframe” if you will. And if the structure of your homepage is in order, it can be copied (at least partially) for the structure of the single post template.
For instance … if you are designing a blog homepage, chances are you’ll have a header, navigation, a content column, and some sidebars. Work on the homepage … get the layout hammered out … then use that layout as a guide for your single page template. Replace “recent comments” with “popular posts”. You get the idea.
I’m not saying one is more important than the other … I’m just saying to start with the homepage, and let the other page designs follow from the way your homepage flows.