Day 13: Customizing Your Site's Footer Section!
Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging
It’s lucky number 13 for the Net Fool’s Build-A-Blog Workshop, and it’s high time we work out the kinks of our footer section, eh? 
We’ve started to make headway on our customizations, but we need that awesome ending to leave our readers happy when they reach the end of content. Before we get started, lets take a look at what some of our participants are doing!
- Antonio has made some great progress with an already awesome looking blog called “My Info ITN“
- Johnny put our words of advice to work on his home repair blog that he named “Home Repair Helper“
- Devon, after a bit of domain name headache, got online with “Gamer Blurb“
This is just a random sampling of some of the great work we have seen so far from the Build-A-Blog Workshop. Keep up the good work and you might be featured next time we recap our participants!
Two Types of Footer Sections
I want to help you through your footer section by breaking things down into two categories. In my mind, you can have one of two types of footers: one with room for extras (like Jimvesting), and one with a simple row for links (like Jimvesting). With each, come a few advantages and disadvantages… so read carefully.
Footers with Room to Share
Is your footer more like the one at Jimvesting.com, then you need to maximize the amount of use that you get out of it! Because the viewers that scroll down to the bottom of your website are going to be, on average, more interested in your content than the usual passerby… we have to make sure that we get in one last monetization or use for our guests. Here are a few suggestions of features you should add to your footer:
- Advertisements (affiliate links work great!)
- Alexa.com widget (to boost your rating)
- Flickr Images
- Top Commentors/Users
- Site Statistics
Footers with Just a Row (or Two!) to Spare
Perhaps you own a website with a minimalist footer that you just can’t do much with? No problems here, other than leaving some room to get some link love back to the original theme designer (we don’t want to void any copyrights!)… you should always give your users a way to link back to your homepage. Additionally, you can use the space available to link to any partner websites that you might have (especially if the blog is part of a network of websites). Finally, because you have room to spare, you can always slide in an affiliate link or two and hope for the best.
Spend 30 minutes today revamping your footer section to make sure that it fits with the rest of the blog. Don’t forget to include your tracking script that we discussed on day 9 of the workshop, as well as anything else that you want to load at the end. Remember, the footer is the last thing that will load, so it is the best place to put a time-intensive script because the rest of the website will be totally visable to your viewer before they waste their time waiting!
-Jimvesting
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It is a good idea to use the space at the bottom. However, it is not always possible. I use ready-made blog where I can’t do such things
Twitter: @motorbeam
May 20, 2009 at 6:25 am #
Good stuff there. I love the alexa widget on the netfool, but sometimes it doesn’t load.
Great idea, though not always possible
i usually don’t give much value for the footer estate…
good post. really need to add more consideration to my footer also….the list of improvements grows lol.
Twitter: @bradnordstrom
May 20, 2009 at 1:42 pm #
Thanks!!!That was great advice
.Keep up righting those posts.
I love the way the John Cow theme works with the footer area. It just separates it from the picture
-Mike
I can’t change my footer either
Twitter: @jimvesting
May 23, 2009 at 9:59 pm #
Johnny-
From what I am looking at, it looks like you indeed can. Log into your WordPress backend, and check out the “footer.php” file!
Gotta love the footer man. Depending on the site, and purpose, I use the footer for a lot of different things. From seo, to hidden pages, or whatever else I feel.
Gotta use it man.
The footer is really important if individuals don’t notice the importance of it. The footer is useful for links and many other things even keeping your alexa rankings intact.